The Rockies once again look for a sweep on Wednesday, and this one feels quite a bit special. If the Rockies somehow manage to sweep the newly "improved" Los Angeles Dodgers straight out of the gate, a lot of panicked is going to be thrown around out West. With San Francisco facing a continually abhorrent Astros team, and the September schedule vastly favoring orange as well, the pressure is already on the Dodgers to convert their new payroll into tangible wins.
Pleasantly, this pitching matchup may favor the Rockies more than either of the previous two. Pomeranz is coming off a solid start, and even with the various ups and downs the lefty has seen in his most recent stint with the team, he is still showing what I believe to be mostly positive. His biggest weakness right now is his pitching inefficiency; even when he's not walking too many people, he's throwing them too many pitches. The key for Mountain Drew today will be to focus on making those key pitches and not burying himself in deep counts.
Joe Blanton has not fared well since putting on the Dodger blue, but with this being his fifth start for his new team, any adjustment factor is going to be largely diminished by this point, and will become less and less relevant with each new outing. From a seasonal perspective, including his time in Philadelphia, Blanton's numbers are actually fairly intriguing in some ways. Several of Blanton's "accomplishment stats" are right in line with his fairly consistent 2010 and 2011, sort of on the upper end of below average. The interesting part is that he's getting there in entirely different ways. Despite both walk and strikeout numbers that are uncharacteristically good for him, Blanton is falling victim to hits much harder than usual. Blanton has always been a particularly hittable pitcher, and that hasn't changed this year, but while he was previously able to thrive on weaker contact frequent though it may be, this year his improved control performance seems to be balanced out by a quality of being hit much harder, and when you allow nearly ten hits per nine innings, that's not a good quality.
