The weather finally turned warm enough to bust out the ol' blogging chair. It's camouflage-patterned camp chair, and I spent many a summer evening in 2010 sitting on the back porch trying to find ways of slathering baseball opinions onto the internet.
To be honest, the past couple of weeks have left me without much to say, other than trying to put a positive spin on the poor performances. The bats haven't been showing up as a whole, and after watching the division lead dwindle to one whole game, I've found myself just kind of surfing Nedroid comics (of Beartato fame) and making myself laugh at silly things.
Y'know, silly things like baseball. But there's been no good cause for laughter, unless bitter laughter counts.
It's hard to just brush off a week of baseball sometimes. It's harder to brush off TWO weeks of baseball. Especially when the team has posted a .639 OPS over the past 2 weeks of baseball.
But here's the thing. The NL as a whole has been below average as far as batting goes, with the exception of the Cardinals and the Reds. This isn't to excuse the Rockies, because they'd be well below average even if the Cards and Reds were playing a bit closer to average, but something's up with bats this year.
The common theme we're seeing is that the Rockies are nearly getting no hit by everyone. Fun fact, this is happening all over baseball. For example:
Francisco Liriano, who had never thrown a complete game before, tossed a no-hitter.
Derek Lowe carried a nono till like the 7th
Anibal Sanchez has nearly thrown 2 nonos
Justin Verlander threw the second nono of his career.
Cliff Lee struck out 16 Braves in a game - a Braves team that isn't insanely strikeout prone.
Maybe it's just something like hitters not adjusting to pitchers yet, or the book isn't written yet on a lot of the guys. I'm not sure either way. But something's up.
Again, this isn't to excuse the Rockies, but maybe there's something bigger going on than just terrible play from the Boys on Blake St.
Rockies’ Tracy says time for Stewart to ‘fish or cut bait’ | All Things Rockies — Colorado Rockies news — Denver Post
Well, it's good to see Tracy take a hard line on some of these guys. Shame Wigginton got hurt. When he's back, I'd like to see Stewart get re-optioned with a "Do Not Promote Until Mid June" label on him. After his 3-pitch strikeout against Brian Wilson, the guy looked legitimately distraught. I felt bad for him.