It's been 191 days since Colorado's last regular season game, a 6-3 win over San Francisco. During that time, there's been quite a lot of turnover on the big league team. While I count only 7 that weren't on that team on September 28th, there were several more that weren't contributing members of the team for most of the year. It's a dramatic departure from seasons past, in which only a few new faces were with the team as it opened the year.
ed. We will have overflows automatically posting at 6:00PM and 7:30PM MDT. Once they publish, please move the conversation to the new overflow! Should we need an overflow between now and 6:00PM, please email Andrew Martin directly! Well, designate someone to do it. I don't need no 40 emails from you rabid fans.
Colorado will have about as easy an opening road series as you can have, going up against the Houston team that will struggle to avoid 100 losses this year. Then again, Wandy Rodriguez is no slouch on the mound -- according to ex-GM Ed Wade, he was worth at least Nolan Arenado to the Astros when Colorado tried to arrange a trade for the veteran lefty late last season. In all seriousness, Rodriguez has been an above average pitcher the last 4 years, so he's not to be taken lightly.
The Astros lineup is a different story, with maybe 1 above average bat in the bunch in Carlos Lee. Jeremy Guthrie will ease into the NL after his move from the AL East -- I'm very interested to see if he can dominate this line-up and go deep into the game.
We've waited over half a year for this game...now let's PLAY BALL!!!