Welcome to Labor Day, the day when our nation celebrates having jobs by not going to them.
Here are a list of players who should be incredibly thankful for their jobs (to which they are contractually bound - well, at least to the compensation):
C Miguel Olivo: .140/.155/.158 in the month of August. Seriously, abysmal. So abysmal we're not the only ones who noticed it. But good news, he's started off September by going 2-12. That's good, right?
2B Clint Barmes: .132/.203/.151 during the dog days. Oof. That explains Eric Young Jr.'s amount of playing time, right? Well, Barmes is 2-7 in September with 3 walks.
1B Jason Giambi: .105/.217/.158 - at least he's walking. That'll boost production from 1B. He's 2-7 with a dinger and a walk in September.
LF Seth Smith: .115/.193/.269 - he hit 2 dingers! woooooo! Way to grab that extra playing time by the short hairs, Seth. Looks like it rattled him a bit, and he's 3-10 in September.
C Chris Iannetta: I don't think it's possible to bat worse than Olivo's August line, and yet Olivo still got more playing time. Not that Iannetta's .163/.288/.186 line actually warranted any more playing time. He's 2-9 with a bomb in the stretch. Jim Tracy has to be pulling his hair out by now. In a mild-mannered way, of course.
2B Eric Young Jr.: Oh right, the experiment thing. .242/.296/.273 isn't going to win you a lot more starts, especially when you're striking out more than normal and not walking (you know, bad things from your leadoff hitter). Going 2-13 in September has me wondering why the organization doesn't want Nelson playing more. I mean, come on, the guy is 1-1 and OPSing 2.000!
I'd pick on the pitching staff, but honestly, nobody was otherworldly bad in August, and I'm pretty sure that Phillies game wrecked everyone's lines for September (except Chacin of course).
So now that we've gotten all of the crappy play our of our systems, we're all set to have another magical run, right?
....right?
September 2007 (yep, I'm making this comparison) started out with Colorado winning 3 straight series in-division (Arizona, San Francisco, San Diego) en route to Rocktober magic. I figure now that the guys have had all of the terrible beaten out of them by now, all that's left is good clutch awesome execution with small ball and 3 run dingers right when you need them and big strikeouts and perfectly turned double plays. That's what September is all about. Also, the Rockies will be buying everyone a pony. Granted, it's a small plastic pony that goes with the small plastic cowboys and indians playset (lousy Cheapfarts), but it's more pony than we got at the trade deadline. (Am I mixing my analogies here? Whatever, roll with it.)
It's a really confusing time right now for a lot of Rockies fans, because we want to believe in the team, we want to think there's a bottle of Liquid Schwartz hidden in the glove compartment, but like I've said a million times before, you can't plan for magic, it just happens, and after a lot of the stanky play we watched in August, it's not unreasonable to not have much faith. My stance is "Realistically and with a balanced tone, I think the 2010 Rockies will fall short of the postseason; that said, this team also has an entire village of wish-granting gnomes underneath Coors Field that will push them farther than their own play possibly could" and I'm sticking to it (there's a distinct chance that "gnomes" could easily change to "leprechauns" or "tax accountants" - well, at least until some fool leaks the Rockies' financial statements). Remember, if wishes were horses, we could open our own dog food company run by beggars and the embodiment of Todd Helton's .958 OPS August.
I seriously have no idea where this is going, so I'll just quote our good friend frightenedinmate#2:
Go Rockies
There's not much for news yet, so I'll just go ahead and paste in MLB.com's Rockies beat report:
Mora playing with energy, vigor of youngster || Thomas Harding, MLB.com
something something Versatility something something Vitality something something Small-Sample splits
More importantly, Carlos Gonzalez' MVP potential is discussed, along with Manny Delcarmen's DESTINY. Seriously, DESTINY. If Carlos Gonzalez can't out-hit Omar Freaking Infante, he should be selling hotdogs in Tulsa or something. Just awful.