Monday Rockpile: The Rockies finally give their fans something good

Nothing that happened yesterday can erase the horror show that is the 2014 season, but it felt good to be on the other side of a pair of bullpen meltdowns for once. Between the two games, the Rockies scored 15 runs from the seventh inning on and dealt a crippling, maybe even a knockout blow to Cincinnati's fading playoff chances. Nick Groke has more on the Drew Stubbs walk off home run and five run ninth inning rally from the first game.

The party continued late in game two as Michael Cuddyer became only the third player in major league history to hit for the cycle in both leagues as reported by Thomas Harding last night. In addition to this being a great moment for the well respected Cuddyer and icing on the cake of a great Sunday at the ball park for the Rockies, it's also the best case scenario for the club if they have any intention of dealing Cuddyer before the waiver trading deadline passes at the end of August. Teams interested want to know if Cuddyer is healthy and can help them with a postseason run, and this puts his name in the news for all the right reasons.

It may be tough to get a deal done though because looking at the standings there's probably a couple of teams who would at least think about claiming Cuddyer just to block a move from clubs in front of them, but this is now a story that at least could get some legs over the next week or two.

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Of course, before all the on field action, Sunday was Todd Helton's day. Here's a link to the video the club played on the big screen at Coors in front of a crowd that exceed 42,000.

There's also a couple of good reads on the day from the Denver Post. The first is this piece from Patrick Saunders which describes the pregame festivities, including a great speech from Todd Helton's daughter, Tierney Faith.

Then there's also this story from Terri Frei, which helps capture the refreshingly different vibe present at the ball park yesterday.

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Kevin Henry from the Tulsa Examiner has a couple of quick interviews with notable players. The first is from last Thursday where he chats with Michael Cuddyer during his rehab assignment and the second is from over the weekend with top prospect Jon Gray. Gray notes that his biggest struggle this year in Tulsa has been his inability to consistently limit the amount of pitches he throws each inning. As a result, his outings have been shorter than desired and he's not able to recover as well as he would like from mistakes in the early innings. Gray's season hasn't been terrible, but he hasn't overpowered the league the way his stuff suggests he's capable of doing.

Finally, the Rockies blogger panel was held over the weekend at El Charrito's and it featured both current and former Purple Row writers in Bryan Kilpatrick, Drew Creasman, and Andrew Martin. You can hear the talk here over at Rockies Zingers.