Kosuke Fukudome didn't have anything on Brian Fuentes yesterday afternoon during the ninth inning. Neither did Derek Lee and Aramis Ramirez, for that matter. That certainly was quite the first test for Fuentes in his return to the closer role: facing the heart of the Cubs lineup. How long will this move last?

Hurdle said it served no purpose to say whether the move would be temporary, since there is no way to predict how Fuentes and Corpas will perform.

"I think you do is what's best for the club," Hurdle said. "And that's to give the ball to Brian right now, get the heat off Manny, give him an opportunity to work his way (back). See how that plays out."

Sounds as if Hurdle will stick with this until Fuentes blows a few saves in a row, no?

Cook might have a new nickname soon, "The Terminator," if he keeps coming up big after the Rockies fall big time.

Tracy Ringolsby suggests two possible lineup changes, one Hurdle likely won't do and the other, possibly. Todd Helton moving to the two-hole has been bandied around before, but would Hurdle actually stick with such a move for long?

Mark Kiszla chimes in with a "This isn't October anymore for the Rockies" piece.

Next up, a weekend series against the Dodgers. We'll get our first look at Hiroki Kuroda tonight.

Maybe since the SBN blog network was down last night, I can pretend that game didn't exist. Sigh, probably not. At any rate, you have my apologies for the site's issues, but the Rockies will have to do their own apologizing to all of us for whatever it is that's going on with the pen right now. According to the techies, this was what happened to Purple Row last night:

The summary cause of the outage was that we experienced a major
hardware failure. Through a brute force process of elimination, we
determined that the RAM (memory) we received in the recent upgrade was
"bad". That type of problem can cause unusual, unexplained errors in
software that makes great use of RAM and that is exactly what happened
to us. It sounds like an easy, quick problem to solve, but "bad" RAM
is so rarely the first explanation of an outage like this, that it
took us awhile to go through the process of confirming it and finally
making hardware changes to deal with it. Basically, this was a worst
case scenario event.

No, a worst case scenario event is having two core players you just locked into multi-year contracts -players you thought would develop into stars over the coming seasons- suddenly turn into duds. The Rox equivalent of Cinderella losing her magic carriage and a shoe.

This midnight pumpkin scenario hasn't happened, and it's highly unlikely to happen, but late April/early May is high time for premature panic. The fix for Tulo at least will probably prove to be in retrospect just and easy and quick as the fix to the hardware here at Purple Row and I'm hoping last night's homerun was a sign that it's already happened. I'm also hoping the same easiness is true of fixing Corpas, but pitchers always scare me.

At the very least, Manny's probably getting bumped out of his role for a little while to try and get back on track. But that means Brian Fuentes, who of late has been just about as ineffective in the eighth inning as Corpas has been in the ninth, takes back the closer job. At least we have a knight in shining armor on the way.

So, the biggest problem during last night's game was a) the failure to successfully execute run-scoring plays with men on base, b) a bullpen that couldn't hold a one-run lead, or c) both a & b? Maybe Ryan Speier should have entered the game, since it seems that was the turning point in the game, according to the second link:

So it was that the turning point came when Speier turned around and jogged back into the bullpen. Working in his fourth game in five days, Fuentes suffered a second consecutive hiccup [...].

Actually, Fuentes had pitched in five of the last six games after his appearance last night. And the game Fuentes didn't pitch in was Friday's opening victory against the Astros. That's back-to-back-to-back games for Fuentes. According to Josh Kalk's study on the use of relief pitchers, a reliever loses about a mile and a half per hour on his fastball when pitching three straight days. Just something to note.

Also, part of the confusion over who was going to come in to replace Bucky is a result of Bob Apodaca dealing with a family matter. Bullpen coach Rick Mathews moved to the dugout, leaving the pitchers in charge of the 'pen. Fuentes thinks the mix-up occurred as a result of Micah Bowie incorrectly taking the call. Well, that was not the worst thing Bowie did last night. The Rockies do not know when Apodaca will return to the team.

Let's see less of the bullpen tonight and more of Jeff Francis.

Spilly knew exactly what to say about his at-bat right after he made that phantom catch:

"That was probably my favorite at-bat I've had in my entire life," Spilborghs said.

Cecil Cooper's not getting laughs out of that, having been thrown out of the game during his argument with home plate umpire Rick Reed: "[...] I thought they all blew it. Simple."

Not lost in all of this is the great start Cook had and the effective relief from Fuentes and Corpas. Hopefully Cook's start rubbed off on U-Ball and we'll see something similar out of him today. We want to see the new youngster outduel the at-one-time new youngster for the Rockies in Shawn Chacon. It'll be a "more special start" since all of Colorado will be able to see him pitch against his home state team.

Also found in that last link, we find out that Hurdle wants Morales to work on his move to first base in order to correct his balk problem and that Clint Barmes really is a super utility player as he'd be the emergency catcher if Torrealba and Iannetta both went down in a game. Second, short, third, pitcher, catcher, and he could play the outfield in a pinch. He's a man for all seasons.

The Giants will look to help all-glove, no-bat starting shortstop Brian Bocock by purchasing the contract of the speedy all-glove, no-hit shortstop Emmanuel Burriss. He's certainly off to a better start this year than he was last year in the minors. Probably won't help all that much, and McCovey Chronicles slogan of "All Outs, All Season" will still be true.

In former Rockie players news, Josh Fogg has joined Jeremy Affeldt in the Cincinnati bullpen after Matt Belisle was named as the starter for Monday's game, one Fogg had been schedule to start.