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!