For whatever reason, the most minute pressures of day to day living that most people seem to take with relative ease tend to get blown out of proportion for me. I'm not sure why my mind wants to make mountains of every menial molehill that crosses my path, but it's the way I operate for some reason. Seriously, something so simple as eating breakfast sometimes seems like a monumental achievement for me. The personality flaw is certainly not endearing to me, as it's made making a living more arduous than it should be and the carryover into my social life has made me one of the most reclusive people I know. Which really isn't saying much, since I'm so reclusive and don't really know a whole lot of people. 

For obvious reasons, I really don't like mentioning this aspect of my life as it's not the most flattering of traits. I bring this up because with my family in town last week, I got sort of overwhelmed with those issues and dug myself into my hermit shack for the last three days with the hopes that I could re-emerge by the time the Rockies come to town tomorrow. Happily, I think all systems are go. I finally got out and went grocery shopping yesterday and today I might even get my hair done.

Anyway, it also helps that the Rockies are once again in a Coors Field induced state of hopefulness, having gone 6-1 over the seven game stand. Fittingly, Brian Fuentes, in what could very well be his last game in Coors Field in a Rockies uniform, tied the franchise record for saves in the final game of that homestand.

What's more, however, this homestand showed a much more dangerous team than we've seen all season, with three wins in which we beat the Dodgers or Pirates better than five runs. We've had six such contests in July so far, with only ten combined in the other three months. A team pariah for the first two months in the season, Brad Hawpe's hitting .301/.400/.548 in July after ane even more sensational June. Jeff Baker really is proving himself an asset, Clint Hurdle is giving Chris Iannetta a greater majority of starts and Ian Stewart has hit safely in all five games since his most recent call-up. As Russ mentioned yesterday, Ubaldo Jimenez has been a revelation and our bullpen has been phenomenal this month.  While that bullpen's chemistry may be disrupted with a Fuentes trade, there's no doubt that we've got some legitimate quality parts in it right now. The team's issues, which early in the season seemed to numerous to count are basically down to just a couple of major concerns:

1. A recovery of Troy Tulowitzki
2. Finding a number three starter

That second one, despite Kip Wells's disaster of an outing in the fifth starter slot on Monday and the scariness of relying on Glendon Rusch to continue to walk the fine line he's been going at, or for Jorge de la Rosa to banish bad Jorge for good, really boils down to finding just one more quality starter among a pack of possibles and then as last season showed, you can sort of fudge quality with enough quantity in the other two slots.

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The latest leveraging by teams interested in Brain Fuentes to try and get the Rockies to back off their demands is to kick up rumors about interest in other directions. So you see stories of teams looking at George Sherrill instead, and saying that the Rockies are asking for too much. Meanwhile, included in that note is that the Rockies are scouting the Angels Nick Adenhart. It could just be a lot of last minute posturing by both sides. The Rockies want to be indicating that they have an Adenhart offerm other teams want to indicate that they have other options. Something's going down soon, that much is clear.