First of all, I hope everybody takes time today to honor those that have died in service to our country. I can't be more grateful to those that sacrificed their lives so I can enjoy my own life and freedom. It's hard sometimes to watch people pay more attention to getting a good deal on a car, or the perfect steak off the grill and completely ignore the purpose of Memorial Day, but then again, that they are able to ignore that purpose without fear and have the financial stability to buy that car or steak makes me even more thankful to the heroes who helped make it possible.
Okay, I'm curious where Rockies fans are right now. The team has come nearly a third of the way into the 2008 season, ten games behind, ten games under, and it's rather obvious that some serious changes have to be made either with the on field performance of the team or the personnel that take that field. Perhaps the personnel off the field as well. What single change would make the biggest impact? How expensive is it going to be? Or can we just wait, do we need to make any changes at all?
Personally, my current list of priorities -and the amount of wins over our current state that I think they'll bring- to fix the 2008 season for the Rockies looks like this:
- Get healthy, +4 wins
- Trade Yorvit Torrealba +2 wins
- Trade Jeff Francis while he still isn't Barry Zito - win neutral, but something that I fear needs done sooner rather than later.
- Fix Brad Hawpe +2 wins
- Trade or DFA Jeff Baker and give Helton more rest so we could see what a Garrett plus Stewart infield would look like. +1 win
- Pray that Dexter Fowler has an epiphanal moment tonight that involves making him the baseball player he could be. +4 wins if it happens, but wishing for it really isn't an effective use of time.
- Replace the manager. +1 win
- Get a better fifth starter. + 0.5 win
- Replace some miscellaneous bullpen part. +0.5 win
As you could see, the fire Hurdle thing is fairly far down there. As is worrying about JDLR or Arias. A trade of Holliday or Atkins, while I think it would help the team long term, simply won't have a positive impact on 2008, so it's not on this particular list of priorities. I might be underestimating the wins we'll get with rotation fixes, but expecting Hirsh, Wells and/or Rusch to drastically outperform Fancis and de la Rosa seems like an iffy call at best at this point. Morales should be capable of it, but he's such a mess right now it seems very unlikely. All told, the +11 that I see won't cut enough into the D-backs lead, but it could at least bring us back to respectable. Anyway, what thoughts do other people have?