Despite Arizona's wealth of position talent, every time I look at their pitching staff I remember why I don't expect them to finish ahead of the Rockies again next season. Still, for this year, of all our divisional foes Arizona seems to own us record wise - although the Rockies have outscored the Snakes 92 to 89 on the season thanks largely to a couple of blowouts - but the teams are a lot closer than that eleven to six record indicates.
Today we'll see another example of why, as a pair of struggling pitchers take the mound for these two teams. The main differences? A) Jeff Francis is twenty four, a rookie likely to get better over the next couple of seasons, and he makes $317,000 a year, while Ortiz is thrity-one, injury-prone, bad and likely to get worse over the next three seasons of his ridiculous seven million plus contract. Seriously, without significant changes, the D-backs will be no closer to contention next year than they are now, and likely to regress, while the Rockies are already showing signs of tremendous progress. Today it would be nice if we put an exclamation on that point with another blowout victory.
Go Rockies!