A pitcher that I really hated for his ability to make the Rockies look ineffective last season, and who wound up making me lose a bet with our usually friendly rivals at the AZ Snakepit makes his debut with the team today. Will Hernandez benefit from the switch back to the NL, with the hole riddled lineups that his veteran savvy has been able to take advantage of in seasons past? Or does the decision to bring an aging and well into his decline flyball pitcher into Coors Field spell yet another disaster waiting to happen in a season that's already had it's share? While I'm hoping for the former, the point is that this is a very low risk move to find out. Jorge De La Rosa, if he was better at all than Hernandez, was only marginally so, and the difference was not nearly enough to not take this bet on Livan. If the season continues to go down in smoke, August 10, 2008, will prove mostly moot, just a minor footnote in our march to also-ran status. If, however, the Rockies do have another comeback in them, then it would mean the Hernandez experiment was a success, and today would be an important marker of where the turnaround got a boost.

Go Rockies!