Masterson's Musings: Return of the Jedi

- Thank Elway for the new South Park episode completely validating everyone here at Frost Brewed Baseball's opinions of the new Indiana Jones movie. Though we didn't take our criticisms as far as Trey Parker and Matt Stone did, we agree wholeheartedly nonetheless.

- To everyone who thinks that Ryan Howard should be the NL MVP because he led the NL in HRs and RBIs (but hit .250)......don't watch baseball anymore because you obviously have no idea how the game works or what it takes to be the best player in your league. Go live on an island somewhere where you're unable to follow the game or get internet access (no matter what Bill Curtis tells you) because you're a horrible fan of the game and should be banned from watching the sport altogether. Albert Pujols is the hands-down pick to win the MVP this year (.357, 37, 116 with a .462 obp on a team that has literally no other offensive threat or pitching to speak of.) Anyone who votes against him is un-American and slits the necks of baby seals on top of Old Glory.

- While watching Game 1 of the NLCS tonight (and pouring out a cold one in remembrance of what we were doing at this time last year,) I was marveling at Joe Buck trying to explain how Manny Ramirez had transformed the Dodgers from an also-ran into a playoff team. In one sentence he said that the Dodgers had finished with an 84-78 record, 15th among Major League teams. Maybe two sentences later he made the statement that until Manny arrived on the LA scene, the Dodgers were a .500 team.............last time I checked 84 wins wasn't really that far off from a .500 team. In fact, it's about 3 wins. Yeah, Manny hit a ton when he got to California, but he didn't really make the Dodgers that much better of a team alone. Andre Ethier started hitting everything from here to Kathmandu and you could easily argue that Greg Maddux had a much stronger influence on the pitching staff than Manny had on the Dodger hitters (you really think Jeff Kent would take time off his motorcycle riding, wrist breaking, teammate pushing schedule to listen to a guy with 500 homers?) Maddux, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, has had a calming effect on everyone on that staff. Derek Lowe thinks it's 2004, Chad Billingsley has harnessed his immense talent, hell, even Hiroki Kuroda has stopped doing his Hideki Irabu impression since Maddux joined Los Doyers. Here's what I'm getting at: Manny sucks. Maddux is smart. Joe Buck says contradictory things.

-The Avs had their opening game tonight (yeah, that's right, hockey's back...you had no idea it was gone, did you?) Well, good thing the offense showed up because we might as well have played with an empty net. We still lost 5-4 but at least our O showed some skill. Peter Budaj, however, should be perusing the want ads come tomorrow morning. Here's the deal: We've given this guy a chance, many chances in fact, to be our number 1 goaltender and he has never taken the initiative and ran with it. Hell, even Jose Theodore came around when given the reins last year. Tonight, we outshot the Bruins 39-20, but still came up on the losing end. 5 goals on 20 shots? Couldn't we just stick a fat guy between the pipes and reap the same results? What's Roseanne doing nowadays? I'm sure she's free.

-So the Rockies decided to fire pretty much all of their coaches? Most, but not all. In fact, only pitching coach Bob Apodaca and first base coach Glenallen Hill were spared. I have to wonder why them? With the pitching suffering the way it did this year, why didn't Apodaca get the axe? The hitting slumped and hitting coach Alan Cockrell got canned. Did O'Dowd just throw a bunch of darts at a board with all the coaches names on it? Shouldn't the firings have started with Clint and ended with Hurdle? In any other city he'd have been fired 5 years ago. But not here, we don't seem to care enough to make any major changes. We'll just sit on our laurels of our World Series appearance from a year ago and think that our fans are dumb enough to not notice/care.

-I'm only rooting for my cousin to do well in the Red Sox/Rays series. I can't in good faith root for the Red Sox after what they did to my Rockies and Indians last fall. Though it would be cool to see a World Series ring in person.

When Does the '09 Season Start?

Phew! It's about time. I thought we were never going to give up hope on this season. It seemed that every time we won a few games in a row, Arizona or LA would lose a few in a row and we'd still find ourselves teetering on the brink of contention while still trying to validate our record which hasn't been at least 7 games below .500 since April. These last few games in Hot-lanta did it.....finally. I think our bullpen literally gave up 1,000 runs to the Braves who came into the series with an inexplicably worse record than your Colorado Rockies. Now that we're just playing out the rest of the season like we should have been doing since about the end of July if the NL West had been worth a damn, here's what the Rocks need to do in order to get back on the contention train for 2009.

1) Get the young kids some PT
Make Dexter Fowler the starting centerfielder for the rest of the season and see what the kid can do. He's already shown he's got the speed, the arm, and the glove, so just put a pair of spikes on him and turn him loose. No more Willy Taveras which means: no more pop ups to right field, no more bunts back to the pitcher, and no more .300 on base percentage for a leadoff hitter. Get rid of Taveras in the offseason and put Fowler in the mix to be the starting CF next season.

Give Joe Koshansky some starts at first base. He hasn't really performed well at the Major League level yet, but either did Ian Stewart until he got consistent playing time when Todd's back finally told him to eff off. This guy has absolutely torn up the Pacific Coast League in Colorado Springs to the tune of a .300 average with 31 home runs and 122 rbis. He also had an on base percentage of .380 with an OPS of .980 which is damn impressive. He also hit for not none, not one, but two cycles this season. That just doesn't happen in professional baseball. He's excelled everywhere but with the big club yet and given some consistent time at first, he could be the second coming of Ian Stewart....whose first coming happened about 2 months ago. He's our first baseman of the future once Todd's contract finally expires after next season and who knows how long his back is going to hold up. Start him a few games in a row and see how he responds.

Send Greg Reynolds out to the hill to start a couple games as we finish out the schedule. As Clint has already done this (Reynolds will take the place of Livan "Once the Season's Over" Hernandez in the rotation) it makes me believe that Hurdle hasn't gone completely daffy yet. Close, but not quite.

2) Finish with a flourish
Yeah this season has been as big a disappointment as the new Indiana Jones movie, but that doesn't mean we have to go into the offseason with the bitter taste of defeat in our mouths. We still have 3 games against the Doyers and 6 against the D-Bags and if we want to play the role of spoiler for any of these clubs, we have the technology and the talent to do so. If we can end the season on a high note, we'd hit the offseason perhaps willing to sacrifice some of our homegrown talent (Atkins) to make some noise on the free agent and trade market as we look for a legitimate starting pitcher to stabilize our rotation.

3) DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER EVEN THINK ABOUT PLAYING LUIS VIZCAINO
Worst. Free. Agent. Signing.....of the past year. (Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, you still take the cake on that one)

4) Use this season as a learning tool
Yeah it's been a rough year to say the least. But that doesn't mean we should just forget it ever happened. For whatever reason we completely bombed this year. (In the dictionary under the term "whatever reason" you will find the pictures of Luis Vizcaino, Kip Wells, Mark Redman, Glendon Rusch, Willy Taveras, and Tulo's first month of play.....seriously, look it up. It's in the W's) Did we come out cocky? Maybe, but it still shouldn't have been the entire reason we played so poorly this year. The team needs to use this season as a learning tool. Learn from the mistakes you might have made this year so they don't happen again. Tulo will learn to not punch wooden bats that are prone to splintering with his open palm. Todd will learn to give himself a day of rest or two every now and then. The Franchise will learn to tell the damn trainer when his shoulder is bothering him right away, and Matt will learn what $150 million over 7 years looks like when he hits the free agent market.

Since baseball season is almost over, we set our sights to football. But don't worry, I'll still have a series of Rockies season recaps to write once all 162 games are played.

Rox Recap 5/26/08 (Phrickin' Pathetic)

Watching tonight’s game reminded me of the movie Major League III: Back to the Minors starring the irreplaceable Scott Bakula. You know the movie, where the hotshot AAA manager of a group of misfits challenges the arrogant Major League team owner to a game just to prove how much their heart can overcome the talent of the big club. Of course, Scott Bakula prevails in the Hollywood ending. Watching tonight’s game was like watching what would happen to the minor league team in real life. With the lineup we’re throwing out there every night for at least the next few weeks, I fear we might be in for many similar sickening contests.

1) Our “starter” Jorge de la Rosa, who was only our starter because no one else this side of Spilly is going to replace him, served up more meatballs than Emeril Lagasse. No matter how hard you throw a fastball, and Rosie can only get it up to 93 when he muscles up, if there is no movement on it Major League hitters will rock you. Facing the Phillies lineup right now is like running head first into a moving buzzsaw. After scoring 15 runs yesterday against the Astros they put up another 20 off our “pitching staff” tonight. This has to be Rosie's last start for the Rockies because we can’t continue to throw AA pitchers (at best) into the fire of a Major League season. By the way, Rosie was the guy that Dan O’Dowd thought so highly of that he felt it necessary to trade Ramon Ramirez to the Royals back in Spring Training. What has Ram Ram done so far in Kansas City? He’s sporting a sick 2.14 ERA with 25 strikeouts in 21 innings pitched. You think we could have used those numbers in our underachieving bullpen? Dealin’ Dan strikes again.

2) After the top of the first inning in which Spilly blasted a 3 run shot to give us a short lived lead (and the only bright spot of the entire night), the Rockies were outscored 20-1. Three Phillies hitters had 4 or more RBIs including famed Rockie killer Chase Utley who totaled a whopping 6. Out of the 6 Rockies pitchers used, Manny Corpas was the most impressive and with his track record from this season, that’s never a good sign. We totaled 8 walks and 19 hits allowed. We also struck out 10 times including an inexcusable 7 against soft tossing, 45 year old lefty Jamie Moyer who last cracked 90 miles an hour on a pitch during the Clinton era. It’s one thing to be a team full of impatient young hitters who have trouble staying back against a crafty veteran, but to not make any adjustments throughout the course of a 9 inning ball game is just indefensible. We’ve prided ourselves on the depth of our farm system and now it’s their time to prove that they’re either prepared for prime time or just another part of our pitiful problems.

3) 20 runs given up by our “pitching staff” in today’s ballgame wasn’t just impressively horrid, it was unwatchable. I found myself enthralled in American Gladiators which was much more entertaining than that sorry excuse for a baseball game. Those contenders on that show have heart that our “pitching staff” can only wish for. One contender actually dislocated his left shoulder during the Eliminator obstacle course, popped it back in, and finished the course in near record time. Oh yeah, and he was legally deaf as well. Why am I talking about American Gladiators on a blog about Rocky Mountain sports? Well, would you want to keep discussing topics that make you want to find the nearest cement wall, take a running start, and just see if you can bash your head right through it? I didn’t think so.

Our first trip back to Philly since our triumph last Rocktober was like watching the new Indiana Jones right after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. No only did it leave us yearning for past successes, but it made us want to vomit and throw things at our tv.

Go, um, Rapids.