The Rockies six to nothing loss to Roy Halladay and the Phillies on Friday night falls into two categories in my book, unfortunately, the categories are sort of contradictory:
- The less dwelt on it the better, the Rockies were up against an ace at the top of his game and didn't have the pitching to match him.
- Winning teams do find ways to beat top pitchers on occasion, the Rockies haven't since the All Star break.
I guess in short, the Rockies mettle has been tested the last two days and came up lacking, but I don't know if we can read much into that yet just because Halladay and Johnson are at such a high skill level, any team could be lacking facing them in back to back starts. The Rockies did continue a sky high strikeout rate they've had since the break, adding nine more to Halladay's season totals tonight while collecting just five hits. Players that looked particularly lost at the plate tonight were Dexter Fowler and Miguel Olivo.
Aaron Cook didn't have command, and he skirted around trouble frequently in the first four innings before finally getting whalloped for five runs in the fifth, with a two run Ross Gload home run putting an exclamation point on the disastrous inning. Jhoulys Chacin relieved him and pitched fairly well, but the Phillies tacked on one more run in the eighth inning to get the final result.
The nightmare road trip, on which the Rockies are now 2-6, is approaching the end, and we've finally gotten past the most difficult aspects of it as the Phillies pitchers for the next three nights aren't quite the same caliber of the pitchers we've been getting for most of the other eight games. The Rockies really need to take two of the three to save some face heading into what will hopefully be an easier stretch of the schedule.
If the Rockies want to return to the playoffs, that second point above needs to change from the current trend. Eventually the Rockies will have to beat a few top of the league pitchers to get back to October, it's too bad that it didn't happen tonight.
Roll Call: GoRockies!!, SDcat09, The Lodo Magic Man, Mondogarage, TuLoRocks2008, holly96, RhodeIslandRoxfan, RdRnnr, Thnikkaman, Andrew Martin, Chrysicat, El Paso Jeff, Yokel, jrockies, WolfMarauder, M4LCHIK, trekinaz, Maria M, arpagamos, Junction Rox, theshiva, Russ Oates, NinjaSwan, MileHighMadness, Rox Girl, The jDub, UpUballingAllNight, RoxFan1701, stardate armageddon, Hollidayrain, controlled_slide, humaDONT, AcaGuy, Oldfoagie, glaucophane, WanderingRoxFan, DAWNMARIE01
Total Users: 37
Total Posts: 1230
Total Threads: 2