The Rockies try to win the rubber match and take a series from the perennial NL East division winners. Francis has been decent his last couple of starts and should he continue that trend, the Rockies will have a pretty decent chance of taking the series. In the meantime, this notes article from the official site indicates the Ryan Shealy as outfielder project is set to get underway this offseason, with Brad Hawpe struggling since his return from injury I can see why the Rockies feel some urgency to get him out there. Shealy's bat can play anywhere, but his defense is likely to be a liability anywhere other than first. Just how much of a liability is the next question, and whether it's worth it. In the corners, maybe it is.
Ryan Shealy might be trolling the outfield come 2006
The real interesting point of this article is that the Rockies are looking to go into 2006 having their cake and eating it too. This makes it fairly clear that the Rox tend to keep both Shealy and Todd Helton over the winter at least, which either way takes away one of our better bargaining chips available to work on building the team. Complacency isn't usually a good thing and I wonder if it will come back to haunt us, still, losing either Helton or Shealy's bats might come back to haunt us as well, so maybe I'm just blowing smoke here. Plus, add the track record of Dan O'Dowd's return on his trades and I take back the entire first half of this paragraph. It's good that we're trying to eat our cake and have it too.
Go Rockies!