F's for the A's

The Oakland A's looked more like the team hoping to get back to .500 than the team that had beat everyone who'd shown up at the ballpark the last ten games. I didn't expect (and still don't) the rox to get the best of the A's during the three-game series. However, I also didn't expect the A's, the hottest team in MLB coming into CF, to play like they did last night. The game was what has become the norm rather than the expection at CF, in that the score was 2-0 and runs were somewhat hard to come by. But in the sixth Nick Swisher let a Holliday line drive get under his glove to allow a run to score and the A's bullpen had a difficult time throwing strikes in the eighth, walking four batters and two runs in in a four-run inning that put the game out of reach. The A's grounded into four double plays, one in the eighth with the bases loaded and one out when the score was 3-0. After a terrible performance his last outing, Kim dominated over six innings, striking out five while allowing only four hits. Now the team with the longest winning streak in baseball is the Marlins.

The NL West is getting more interesting by the day. Currently all five teams are within 1.5 games and all at .500 or better. My brother-in-law, Greg, picked the Dodgers to win the division. Now, before you advise me to never talk to him again and white out his name in the family Bible, let me explain something. Greg is studying atmospheric sciences, or, meteorology. So, I figure I'll just apply the same level of accuracy of the average weather forecast to his baseball prediction. The way I see it, it's now a four-team race. Sorry Trolley Dodger fans! Greg and I, along with my dad, will be making the pilgrimage to CF Saturday to see the rox and Rangers (Greg is a Rangers fan).

I've been thinking to myself that the A's usually seem to do what they have done so far this season. That is, struggle out of the gate when the season starts and then go nuts at some point and win games in bunches. I had no idea this trend was so prolific until the broadcast last night when they mentioned that since 1999 the A's are six games over .500 in April and May and 200 games over .500 from June 1 through the rest of the season. They were 14-2 in June this season before last night's game.

Yesterday, the RMN had a nice article about Tulo, making comparisons to Oakland's Bobby Crosby.

Until next time, go rockies!

Feelin' Good

Okay, rox fans, the staff at DITr are giving you permission to start feeling good about your beloved team again. The last two games have gone a long way in the effort to restore confidence and hope that this season still has a lot to offer. Granted, it is only two games, and there remain plenty of opportunities for things to go south, but it could have easily gone the other way right now. Allow me to offer a backdrop. The team was in the midst of a nearly three-week tailspin, had gone from first to last in merely 12 days, and were, in general, reeling. Things were beginning to take a more positive turn as the rox were on the verge of taking a home series from the Dodgers, only to blow a lead in the ninth and lose the series, ending an already dissappointing homestand on an especially sour note. How the team would respond was probably anyone's guess. Going on the road after a heartbreaking loss to a divisional rival is recipe for continuing the tailspin. To make matters worse, the rox found themselves in an early deficit Monday at Washington. I have to admit, I was not feeling very good at that point. I was not giving the rox much of a chance to win the game despite being down by only two runs. The rox however, did win the game and soothed some of the bad feelings. More importantly though, the rox put the difficult loss to the Dodgers in the rearview mirror and forged ahead. Better yet, the rox beat the Nationals last night running away, recording double figures in hits for their fourth game in a row and sixth time in the last seven games. The ten-day rolling average for batting average is .305 and the rox have surged from eighth to fourth in the NL in average in recent days. The question at the top of most people's list was which team we had witnessed so far this season was the real one. Was it the team that surprised virtually everyone by hitting on the road, winning ballgames in bunches and leading the division? Or is it the team we've observed recently that made the average journeyman fifth starter look like Cy Young reborn and coudn't hit if their grandma was on the mound? Obviously the jury is still out, but if they'd lost these last two games in Washington then the masses would be leaning to the latter. At least we are still wondering at this point instead of being convinced that we're a bad team that started well as opposed to a decent team that experienced a bump in the road along the way. There were a lot of reasons to feel bad about this team while they were in the midst of their recent 5-13 span. They are beginning to remind us why we felt good about them before that.

I've said this to a couple different people and now will go on record. The way the NL West is developing, I think the winner of the division will be whoever gets hot down the stretch. I'm not even talking about the whole month of September, but final two weeks of September.

Until next time, go rockies!

Hitting the Road

After a dissapointing 3-6 homestand, the rox started their most recent road trip off with a come-from-behind win last night against the Nationals. This is something the rox have not done much of recently, both win and in come-from-behind fashion. As frequently as the rox came from behind to win during the first six weeks or so of the season, that's how seldom they have managed to do it in the last three weeks or so. Two things need to happen in order to have the opportunity for a come-from-behind win: the pitchers need to keep the game close and the batters need to deliver some timely hits. The first element has continued to happen on a regular basis as the pitching staff has remained fairly consistent and solid. Timely hitting, on the other hand, was almost non-existent in recent weeks. All one has to do to get the picture of the rox' poor hitting performances was to look at a chart of the batting average with a 10-day rolling average. From May 9th until June 7th, the 10-day average never was higher than .252, topping out at .252 on May 22nd and a low point of .206 on June 2nd. The good news is the hitting has improved, with the 10-day rolling average at .294 as of today and the team average over the last seven games at .316. In five of those seven games, the rox have double figures in hits.

The middle infield situation could get very interesting in a month or so with the acquisition of Kaz Matsui from the Mets. The RMN this morning reported that Gonzales will return to the super utility role when he completes his rehab assignment and that Carroll has claimed the everyday second base job. Unless Carroll cools down dramatically in the next several weeks he will see his name in the lineup every single day. As has been noted in a few rockies' blogs recently, Carroll has been the main catalyst of the offense lately and will get a lengthy look from Hurdle before being replaced. That leaves Barmes as the lone candidate to lose his starting position if Matsui is tearing it up at CS by mid-July. Barmes has shown brief glimpses of climbing out of the batting slump that has plagued him nearly all season so far. However, just when you think Barmes once again has a decent chance of stringing together a bunch of hits, he goes o-fer a few games in a row. As Dealin' Dan put it, the trade of Matsui was a no-risk, potentially high-reward deal given the dissapearance of Marrero and with the Mets paying Matsui's salary. Barmes cannot afford to look over his shoulder at all, but it seems that his job is by no means secure.

The rox have signed a number of their draft picks over the last few days, including their first pick, and the draft files have been updated to reflect those signings.

Until next time, go rockies!

Back in the Saddle

In the first two innings of Wednesday's game, the rox equaled their run production for the entire six-game losing streak, at nine. A good, old-fashioned game at Coors Field saw Oliver Perez succumb to his wildness and the rox' sudden ability to put the ball in play with regularity as the rox soared to an 11-2 lead. The rockies' starter Josh Fogg, however, stumbled out the gate in the fifth inning and allowed six runs, not finishing the fifth and thus not qualifying for the win. In the past, this was simply a typical game at CF, the likes of which earned it it's reputation and drew countless criticism from baseball purists. Hopefully this outburst is an indication that the collective batting slump that emcompassed everyone except Matt Holliday and Jamey Carroll is over and done with. Let's not get too excited though. Do recall that the rox won two in a row after the five-game skid and seemed to be on the right track again, only to lose the last two in SD to start the six-game streak. This weekend will be a difficult challenge against LA, which continues to play pretty decent baseball. The last time the Dodgers were here, in the middle of May, they took two of three.

The draft files on the webpage have been updated to reflect the rox' picks in the recent draft. The staff here at DITr would like to offer their traditional congratulations to Charles Matthews, a right-handed pitcher from Athens Academy, the 1502nd, and final selection of the 2006 amateur draft, selected by St. Louis.

Until next time, go rockies!

Finally!

Finally, a DITr post. I know, it's been too long. I won't offer excuses. I won't make up reasons. I'll just agree that it's been far too long and leave it at that.

Finally, a rockies' win. It seems like it's been almost forever since we could utter those words. It was a six-game losing streak, but we as rockies' fans have endured longer and more grueling periods. I think what has made this spell more difficult than others I recall is that we just weren't scoring runs. I don't know how many times I turned on the game in the 4th or 5th inning and the score was 3-0, or 2-0, or 4-0, or whatever. The point is that very often we had a 0 next to our name. It doesn't take an analyst, which I'm, to determine that you aren't going to win many ballgames when you don't score. Prior to last night's game, our 10-day rolling average for runs scored was 2.00. 2.00!! That's Pathetic with a capital P. (Author's note: more on capital letters in a moment). The trend line on virtually all the charts of offensive statistics would make even the most seasoned Wall Street broker take a plunge from the clock tower at Coors Field.

One trend I mentioned awhile back that the staff at DITr would monitor during the season was the average runs scored at CF versus the entire National League. Through last night's games, the NL average for runs scored per game is 9.59 while the average at CF is 8.71. The average at CF has been less than the league for a month now. Another trend I am working on is batting and pitching home/away splits over the history of the franchise. I have batting trends complete but am still working on pitching, so stay tuned. I think it will be interesting.

The way the season started and had been progressing, I'm not sure anyone thought it would come to this. At the very least, I doubt anyone expected it to happen in such drastic fashion. On May 21, the rox were in first place. Twelve days later they were in last. The Designation Committee met Monday in an emergency session and unanimously decided to repeal the capital R, thus the small r in references to our beloved team in this post.

Until next time (soon), go rockies!