Sunday Rockpile: Oh Brothers, where art thou?

Rockies first round pick Tyler Anderson watched the draft with his extended family in a barbecue gathering/celebration in his hometown of Las Vegas. As a fan of both Vegas and barbecue, I heartily approve of this method of celebrating induction into the Rockies family and endorse it for all future draft picks. 

Speaking of high drafted Rockies LHP's, Rex Brothers figures to be an important part of the Rockies bullpen for a long time now that he's received the call to the majors. Troy Renck details a bit more of the last step in his minor league journey before reaching The Bigs. Given the way the rest of the bullpen pitched last night, Brothers might not have to worry about going back to AAA anytime soon.

The Denver Post also notes, this time via Jim Armstrong, that Jason Hammel's back injury last night was not serious. As for the repercussions of an ugly 11-7 loss to Los Angeles, well, they're not that serious either, so long as the Rockies bounce back rather than turn this into a string of losses like they seemed to throughout May. The Giants suffered another significant loss on Friday night losing Freddy Sanchez to a dislocated shoulder that appears as though it could have the second baseman miss a significant portion of the remainder of the season, if not all of it. As was the case with the loss of Buster Posey, the step down from Sanchez to his replacements in terms of win value could amount to more than two wins worth of value for the rest of the season.

Not that this really makes me happy. Winning a division this way is ugly, but losing it would be uglier still. It's a situation where the Rockies (despite a significant loss of their own in Jorge De La Rosa) should be embarrassed to finish behind a clipped Giants team, and not take much for granted should they win heading into 2012. And if Arizona wins instead, well, let's not even get started on the shame of that scenario. So far overall in 2011, the Rockies have been an embarrassment, but I guess my point here is that they're being handed every opportunity to save some face for the rest of the season. They better start taking some advantage of this.