during the past couple days ive been mixing it up with a few people on the boards here about the subject of what direction the rockies are heading in this year.  in general, as anyone who checks the tuesday morning rockpile or last night's game thread can easily tell, i am of the opinion that its way to early to start making any drastic changes or worrying excessively.  others share a different opinion.

first of all, before i begin:  let me say that anything i say here is all in love, and i appreciate the opportunity to discuss the rockies with you.  if ive offended anyone with my sarcasm or comments i apologize.  i just get a little frisky when i talk about the rockies, as we all should.  

anyhow im still buzzing from last night's yorvit-fueled thriller so i felt compelled to post some civilized comments about where i see the rockies going this year and why im  100% confident 2007 will be different than 2006.  so lets get the ball rolling by getting all the givens and other things we know out of the way.  yes, the rockies have not made the playoffs since 1995 nor have they finished a season over .500 since 2000.  yes, they have recently shrunk their payroll and declined to spend "big bucks" on free agents when others in the NL west were more than willing to do so.  yes, they have a pretty cheap ownership.  and yes, as weve all seen, they are now a disappointing 6-8 and already 4 games back in the division.

but before you all take these facts and run with them you should really try to do the opposite of what most local sports columnists do when they write articles about the rockies.  by which i mean, you should stop and think about who's on the team, what theyre capable of, and what direction the team is headed in as opposed to panicking and rushing to the conclusion that "well, theyve been bad for 6 straight years now so theres no way this year wont be 7."  no!  stop!  wait!  lets think/talk about this first!

1. for starters, minus the 7-0 debacle to the giants on monday night, the rockies have been in every single one of their losses.  none was by more than 3 runs, and 4 were by 1 run.  im not implying that the outcome of 1 run games is purely determined by luck, but what if tony clark's ugly popup 2 run double doesnt fall last saturday night?  what if jose cruz jr.'s 310 foot home run two sundays ago off cook gets knocked down just a tiny bit by by a gust of wind and ends up in brad hawpe's glove?  what if matt holliday simply comes through with a sac fly (or better yet, a hit) against the dodgers last tuesday night with the bases loaded and 1 out in a tie game in the 8th inning?  what if those 3 things all happened, we win those games, and are now 9-5?  would we be having these heated discussions about firing hurdle or whatever else?  of course not.  but thats how close its been.  its not like were getting blown out of games.  were right... there.  now im not totally exonerating hurdle or the team.  they need to make plays.  excuses arent wins.  but from the perspective of asking "whats going on with the rockies?  is 2007 just gonna be another 70-75 win season?" i think its important to note just how close we are to being at the top of the division.
2. this is really just an extension of my last point.  but here's 50 cents worth of free advice for all you out there that are ready to call the season a failure already: if youre going to be a big time rockies/baseball fan you need to get used to the concept of the irrelevance of small sample sizes.  by which i mean: you need to understand that what happens over short periods of time is not always indicative of what will happen over long periods of time.  there are literally millions of examples from throughout baseball history that i could use to pound this point into submission.  i am completely overwhelmed in trying to choose which ones to use here.  but i think these 2 make the point pretty nicely: the 2003 marlins started the season 6-9 and the 2002 angels started 6-14 (!).  are you ready for the clever conclusion to that point?  here it is, i bet you saw it coming... both those teams won the world series.  for something more recent, albeit corresponding to an individual player as opposed to a team, remember that chris shelton guy who hit 10 home runs for the tigers last april?  yeah, he finished the season with 16.  he wasnt even on their postseason roster come october.  the lesson, in a nutshell: in baseball, what happens over a short period of time is not always a good indicator of what will happen over a long period of time.  and of course, subsequently, i encourage you all to take the first 14 games of the season with a grain of salt.  i for one am strongly of the opinion that starting 5-7 in our first 12 games really isnt that bad considering how close all the losses were and the fact that 75% of those games took place on the road.  yes, it would have been nice to win 6 or 7 of those.  yes, making excuses doesnt move us up in the standings.  but put simply, the rockies are better than a 5-7 team.  once we get the opportunity to play more games at coors and stomp on some of the NL's doormats (im looking at you, washington, who the dbacks have already clobbered) our record is going to start looking a whole lot better.  
3. "ok", you say, "i understand this small sample size thing.  i get it.  but im still not convinced that were better than 6-8 at this point.  im still not convinced were a playoff team, much less a .500 team."  well of course youre entitled to your opinion.  but stop and think (remember, we dont want to be a rocky mountain news or denver post writer here) before you write the team off.  i know the rockies have been bad for a while now.  but (and i say this with the least amount of sarcasm possible) you may be shocked to find out that that doesnt mean we'll be bad forever!  yes, amazingly, scientific tests conducted by stanford university reseaerchers have shown that a sports team's performance on the field is actually capable of varying from season to season.  strange but true.  anyways, in order to try to convince you that we'll be a .500 team at WORST this year what id like to do is compare this season's roster to last season's roster.  i dont want to micromanage this point and list the two rosters side by side and do an extensive analysis of every single difference, (thats been done very well by numerous people on this site over the course of the past couple months anyways).  but just take 5 minutes and look at the 2006 roster compared to the 2007 one!  the main upticks are this:
   

-tulo cant possibly be worse than barmes and has shown signs of breaking out and being much better.
-the ianetta/torrealba platoon should end up absolultey crushing the production we got out of last year's catchers (danny ardoin and jd closser at the plate... shudder)
-3 of our 4 most important hitters probably have not quite peaked and should be at least a little better this year than last (which is saying something considering the 2006 campaigns they all had).  most major leaguers peak in offensive production at age 27; hawpe turned 27 last june and atkins and holliday turned it during the offseason.  im not saying any will suddeny turn into albert pujols.  but all should be even better than last year.
-kaz matsui so far looks like a better version of jamey carrol who can steal bases.  jamey has better plate discipline but if kaz keeps up the pace he's had going since last september, hes a definite upgrade over a guy that was an above average 2nd baseman already.
-helton is healthy again.  sure looks like it anyways.  im not saying hell hit like he did 5-10 years ago, but im confident hes going to better his 2005 and 2006 power numbers by a good margin.
-the rotation looks AMAZING so far.  no, they wont keep up this pace, but we know what cook can do.  now if we could just give him some run support...  francis is a year older and a year wiser and should be entering his prime.  lopez has been successful in the past and looks like hes regained a lot of confidence.  hirsh was supposed to be ready for the majors and i think its pretty obvious so far that he is.  and fogg looks pretty steady, like a better version of last year's foogg.  certainly a respectable 5th starter.  last year's rotation was great by rockies standards but it looks so far like this years will be even better.

meanwhile, the main downticks are this:
-taveras has been even worse than sullivan was so far.  im pretty worried about him.  but wait, lets go back to point #2... not time to panic yet.
-the pen has been shaky whereas last year it started out wonderfully.  then again, last year it had a lot of really ugly stretches from about mid-june on when ray king and jose mesa got together and decided to stop getting people out.  so really, the standard cant be set too high in comparing last year to this year.

so that's 2 downticks, which arent even necessarily downticks yet (taveras should be a whole lot better, and the bullpen should come together once hawkins stops pitching the 8th and we ditch kim, theres no lack of talent out there), compared to what i see as at least 6 upticks.  put simply the rockies have unquestionably in my mind gotten significantly better than they were last year.  5 wins better, which would get us to .500?  no doubt about it.  10 wins better, which would keep us in the wild card race well into september?  possibly.  15 wins better, which might win us the wild card or even the division?  probably not, but were closer to that than weve been in a long, long time.  it probably sounds like rose colored glasses to many of you.  but many of you are also too attached to the "theyve always been bad before, so therefore theyre going to be bad again!" idea i previously mentioned.  im begging you... take some time.  think about it.  look at the changes weve made.  consider how young the team was last year and what good a year of expeince did them.  im telling you, all signs point upwards right now.  but what about the 6-8 start?  small sample size, my friend.  small sample size.

4. what about comparing the rockies to other local sports teams? this is tempting to do, especially considering their relative success compared to the rockies over the course of the past several years, but i urge you not to do so.  (before i get into any of my analysis, id like to point out that the broncos didnt have a single winning record during their first 13 seasons, and didnt make the playoffs until their 18th year of existence.  the nuggets had more success early in their existence but currently have won 1 playoff series in the last 19 years.  food for thought.)  anyways for starters, baseball is fundamentally different than basketball or football in that players that leave college (or high school) are not ready to contribute at the major league level for several years.  additionally the rate of attrition for players that are drafted with high expectations is significantly higher in baseball than those two sports.  im not saying there are never any highly touted busts in basketball or football, but go on wikipedia and look at the first rounds of the NBA, NFL, and MLB drafts from the past 10 years.  theyll speak for themselves.  beyond that, in baseball its pretty much impossible for one great draft pick to turn a team's fortunes around.  but as john elway and carmelo anthony have shown in our own hometown, in football and basketball its much easier.  yes, i know they both had help, its not like they truly did everything completely on their own, but the point is their impact on the team exceeds that of a great baseball player like a todd helton.  what about building a team via free agency or trades, which the broncos and nuggets have also done?  well, youve sort of got me there.  the monforts learned a lesson from the mike hampton and denny neagle disasters and have decided to keep their pocketbooks closed for the most part recently.  while this has kept us from even being in the running to land marquee players, it has also prevented us from drastically overpaying for mediorce ones (like gary matthews jr. this most recent offseason).  im not a big fan of the monforts and i admit that the jury's out as to how important this development may or may not be.  but if the money we havent spent in the past goes to locking up our current stars long term, i dont think theres too much of a reason to complain.  we just had to endure 5 years of terrible baseball post hampton/neagle to get here.  if it leads to 5 years of pennant contention as our current core works through their peak performance years and are supplemented by rising talent like tulo, ianetta, dexter fowler, franklin morales, etc., then it was probably worth it.  and lesson learned about signing pitchers to 7 year deals as well, i dont think well be doing that again anytime soon.  anyways, the point is: building a football or basketball team is much easier than building a baseball team when it comes to the draft.  and while the nuggets and broncos have also done much better than the rockies in trades and free agency, theyve also had tons more payroll to work with.  as for the avs, who ive conveniently avoided talking about so far in this point... well, theyre a damn well run franchise.  again, in comparison to the rockies, they have an owner willing to open his checkbook to put a winner on the ice.  they also consistently make fantastic personnel moves.  but the money is the most significant difference.  and although hockey has a farm system similar to baseball, "can't miss" hockey prospects are much less likely to miss than baseball prospects.  basically im saying building a hockey team from the ground up is more like building a basketball or football team than it is a baseball team.  baseball is unique like that.  
5. so now for the all important conclusion, id like to synthesize my previous points and try to explain why ive taken the laid back "lets wait and see what happens" approach.  the most important point is probably #3, which is, the team is better than it was last year.  probably significantly so, when you realize the holes in the lineup weve filled at catcher and shortstop.  if you want to argue this with me... boy, i dont know what to tell you.  youre really a no hoper pessimist at that point.  moving from there to point #1, let stop and realize, hey, were almost never getting blown out!  and thats definitely a sign of a great team.  theres an old saying in baseball:  youre gonna win about a third of your games no matter what and youre gonna lose about a third of your games no matter what.  its what happens in that middle third that determines what kind of team you are.  well, the rockies havent quite cashed in on every opportunity they could have in those "middle third" type games yet, but they been in almost every single one of them.  were just a handful of plays away from being 8-6, or 9-5, or even 10-4.  add to that point #2, about small sample sizes.  are the rockies going to spend the whole season playing 9 out of every 14 games on the road?  and are they going to lose more than 3/4 of their one run games?  doubtful.  the chips just havent fallen our way so far.  but theyre going to, im 100% confident in it.  that, my friends, is why im so sure were going to be AT LEAST a .500 team this year.  

so to answer the million dollar question, in regards to our disappointing start, who should we blame?  what is to be done?  well if youve read this far, thanks, i appreciate it.  ill answer this question as quickly as possible because what im going to say should be pretty obvious at this point.  now im not a big clint hurdle fan.  i dont think we should have extended his contract on opening day.  but really, what would getting rid of him right now do?  just about nothing if you ask me.  again, hes not a great manager.  he overused sac bunts last year and has been known to make some questionable decisions regarding pitching substitutions.  (notably when he lets a starter bat for himself late in a game, and then has a reliever on the mound to start the next half inning, which i saw happen at least 5 times in 2006.)  but the impact of managers is heniously overestimated by the media.  hurdle would be a scapegoat at best were we to fire him now.  hes managed pretty well so far this year, in my opinion.  except for overuse of finley (hey, and it paid off last night!) i see no glaring issues with his managing so far.  i know hes "not a winner" and it would be oh so convenient to get rid of him right now.  but hes never had this much talent to work with.  i dont think supposedly great managers like tony la russa or joe torre would have done much better with the 2002-2006 rockies than clint did.  its not like any of those teams should have been contenders.  lets at least give him half a season and see what he can do with this roster.  in my mind, the only real changes that should be made right now are dropping willy t down in the order for a while, moving carroll to leadoff and helton or hawpe to #2, and dumping finley.  short of that the only real issue with our first 14 games was hawkins stinking up the 8th inning and hurdle has already taken care of that on his own (a point in his favor that many of you anti-hurdle people arent acknowledging).  everything else, at least based on what ive seen so far, is going to "fix itself" as the season goes on.  ive been a rockies pessimist for years now and im still 100% confident in this.  feel free to leave comments if you want to discuss this further.  one last time, this is what really matters:

1. better team with a key year of experience for young guys and 2 major lineup holes plugged
   
2. no blowouts (ok, 1 blowout)
   
3. SMALL SAMPLE SIZE

the end.  thanks again for reading.