Friday Rockpile: License to Win

Today, we begin what I determine to be the most nerve racking series remaining this season. Yes, even more than the Giants series. While the Giants games are far more important to us at this point (though every game is an important win right now), the Dodgers, as miserable as they have been, never seem to make it easy for us.

The Dodgers have effectively laid down to our division rivals this month. With six games left against THAT Dodgers team, I'd be more than content. Question is, are they still planning to play spoiler for us regardless?

Today's rockpile title is an obvious reference and it's not a particularly clever play on words. Instead, it's an important message: don't forget that you're more than allowed to beat LA this weekend, team. You have a license to win. The men with the golden bats need to remember that they play series against LA twice, and because tomorrow never dies and baseball is forever, a view to the playoffs lies distant in the living daylights. But only beating non-Dodger teams is not enough. The Rockies will escape their quantum of failure in Los Angeles, say Dr. No to a loss and thunder balls over the fence for the fans' (who love them) golden eyes only.

From Denver with love, WolfMarauder.

Links after the moonraker jump.

Yesterday's Jayson Stark column at ESPN has some brief touches on Jorge De La Rosa and Jeff Francis, who remain the only MLB ready left handed starting pitchers in the organization, both of whom could be heading to free agency this year. DLR has the required service time and no committed contract, while Francis has the required service time and a $7 million club option that Stark feels "clearly won't be picked up", which is where I still stand on the issue. With Jhoulys Chacin more than earning a spot out of the gate in the rotation and the ability to unload Aaron Cook looking slim, we have one rotation spot left for a lefty, and it could very easily be one of these two. Stark's discussion of DLR highlights an anonymous GM's comment that they fear Jorge De La Rosa is going to be an Oliver Perez type case. Clever O'Dowd trying to lower interest? I wish, but that'd be hard to swallow. There's a ton of other interesting stuff in the article to sift through as well.

Mark Kiszla, ladies and gentlemen. Always a lot to say. I admit I don't read a lot of material from Kiszla as I'm a one sport guy, but it still sure seems to me that he's mighty inconsistent in the sides he takes on these issues. Read the article, by all means, but the real gems of this piece are in the comments section. High horse time!

MLB.com's Thomas Harding has written a detailed piece on Carlos Gonzalez, and how the trades and early failures in his career contributed to the player he is today. The article features some commentary from his teammates.

Non-Rockies news: Fangraphs' Alex Remington writes about Derek Jeter's admitted HBP charade earlier in the week. You could all probably guess where I stand on this: I say good for him for finding a flaw in the system and exploiting it; it's no different than the amount of trickery that goes on in receiving pitches in key spots, touching a base for an out in the middle of a turnaround play or, really, the presence of human umpires in general. If you people want every call to be accurate, then find a way to make it happen. Until then, I feel this sort of move is as legitimate as can be. The commentary in this article is intriguing, and covers a couple of different viewpoints.

I've added a poll today since I have election fever. Since I hate pretending I can predict the future, I'll leave this one to you.