5/28/09 - Off Day - "Malaise"

I woke up today convinced Clint Hurdle would be fired.

Went through my daily routine at work. Made the prediction on my morning sportscast. Headed to the golf course at 10, fully expecting a press conference to be underway by the time I walked off the final green.

Nothing. No press conference, no press release, no announcement, no managerial change. Still the same old status quo, where 18-28 and 14 games out of first place inspires nothing more than an ‘Oh, well, we’ll turn it around’.

And the sad part is that it’s not the least bit surprising, that the listlessness displayed by the Rockies organization during this train-wreck of a season doesn’t shock me in the least.

The organization seems to have no motivation to make things better, instead wishing that things will get better because there’s evidence that it can and will. In fairness, they aren’t completely wrong here – there are a lot of guys performing well below their career norms and/or potential, and I refuse to believe that this team is as bad as their current record suggests.

But this franchise has sat idly by while Garrett Atkins has gone 2-for-130 since April 10th and the bullpen has done enough damage late in games to be brought in front of a judge on arson charges and done the equivalent of wave a magic wand and hope things will become all better.

Want to know why I hadn’t posted on this blog for almost two weeks? Because malaise is contagious. It filters from the top down, from ownership who won’t fire their buddies in the front office and in the dugout, to the front office who hasn’t aggressively addressed any weaknesses since 2007, to a manager that keeps running out the same players and expecting different results in cases where that’s completely unwarranted, to a big league roster – and this is the saddest part – who can’t even be bothered to play proper fundamental baseball anymore and who lack the will to fight back in the face of adversity. And it’s even trickled down to this blogger.

The Rockies didn’t play yesterday, so they didn’t lose. But with every single day that this organization sends the message that their plan for success is to hope that 2007 magically happens all over again, we, the fan, lose every single day.