4/26/09 - COL 10, LA 4 - "Feel Good Win"

The most frustrating thing about the Rockies 6-11 start is that there’s no real good reason for it. There’s not any one thing that consistently is costing the Rockies games. They’ve just been… we’ll, they’ve played like they deserve this record, what with shoddy starting pitching, a porous pen, and a lineup that always seems to do just enough to get beat.

The second most frustrating thing about this start is that there’s no one simple solution for it. There’s no cure-all that will shoot the Rox like a rocket up the standings. The easiest way to start winning is to play better, all the way around – get better starting pitching, better at bats with runners in scoring position, more shutdown relief work.

It’s been hard to watch a talented Rockies team – more talented than 6-11, certainly – look unable to play better. I mean, let’s make no mistake – they deserve the record they have. But that’s a small consolation. 17 games in and the top of the rotation is a mess, the lower half of the order isn’t hitting, and there’s not one member of the relief corps that has us breathing easy when they come into the game in a tight game. If this were PlayStation, we’d have pressed the reset button on this season even before this weekend’s series against the Dodgers.

The Rox didn’t just need a win to get out of this funk. They needed a feel good win, one where everybody contributes and you can coast for the final few frames. They got that today against a Manny-less Dodger lineup that Jason Marquis, the Rockies ace through the first three weeks, stifled into the 8th. They got big blasts from the bottom (Barmes) and top (Spilly) of the order. Every Rockie got on base and scored a run.

It sure felt like a monkey off the back today. We’ll see if it can carry over into the San Francisco series starting tomorrow night – if the Rox can take 2 out of 3, well, it won’t be a total PS3-style reset, but it will restore some equilibrium and hopefully get the Rockies back to taking things one day at a time. God knows that was getting harder to do from a fan’s perspective – two four-game losing streaks this early into the season really puts you into that ‘Will we ever win another game?’ mindset something awful.

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Things That Bother Me About Rockies TV Voice Drew Goodman: Part I of a multi-part series

Use of the word ‘tater’ as a verb to describe any deep fly ball to the outfield. A ‘tater’ is an accepted, if rarely used, slang term for a home run. That’s fine. But ‘to tater’, as in “Atkins taters this one to left” or “This ball is tatered to center”… this doesn’t work. Especially because sometimes, those ‘taters’ aren’t ‘taters’ but a simple ‘F7’ in the scorebook.

“Tatered to left… and caught a step shy of the warning track by Spilborghs.” That’s
not a tater, by its very definition.

Also, ‘tater’ isn’t a verb in the first freaking place.