AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > October > 23 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USLong layoff will hurt Rockies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Only baseball, the silliest of sports, could have taken the hottest team in the history of down-the-stretch baseball and given it eight days to cool off. Nobody else has been able to slow the Colorado Rockies, but Bud Selig and his schedulers have managed.
The Rockies will play Game 1 of the World Series Wednesday in Fenway Park. They last played on Oct. 15. They last lost on Sept. 28. The last thing a surging club needs is a week off, but baseball was weary of its crowning event starting and ending on weekends and thereby being forced to share a stage with college and pro football. So Bud and his minions added more off-days to the postseason, and what has baseball gotten?
A showcase event that, if it doesn’t end in a sweep, will share a city with the NFL. The Broncos, long Denver’s favored team, are scheduled to play host to the Green Bay Packers at Invesco Field on Monday night. Game 5 is set for Coors Field, 3 1/2 miles away.
But we shouldn’t be too hard on baseball for not seeing the Rockies coming. On Sept. 15, Colorado was 4 1/2 games behind the San Diego Padres in the wild-card race and only one game ahead of the Braves. It won 13 of its final 14 regular-season games to force a one-game playoff with San Diego. Down 8-6 in the 13th inning against Trevor Hoffman, the Rockies scored three runs - actually only two, given that Matt Holliday never touched home plate with either his hand or his chinny-chin-chin - to buy postseason passage. Once in, the Rockies have proved invincible.
Since it started playing in 1993, Colorado has been the baseball equivalent of arena football. The Rockies had finished above .500 only four times and had qualified for the playoffs but once - they lost to the Braves 3-1 in the 1995 Division Series - and had proved beyond all doubt that baseball without pitching isn’t baseball. In 2002 the frazzled Rockies installed a walk-in humidor at Coors Field to keep baseballs from hardening at altitude and thereby traveling farther than they should.
Until then, nothing had worked. After the 2000 season the Rockies spent $172 million on free agents Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle - recognize those names? - and those two were a collective 40-51 with Colorado. These Rockies, believe it or not, had the National League’s best ERA the second half of the season.
And now the man who overspent for free agents is being hailed as the smartest general manager east of Billy Beane. With no real alternatives, Dan O’Dowd chose to go homegrown, and the Rockies’ system has yielded hitters (Holliday, Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, Troy Tulowitzki) and even pitchers (Jeff Francis, Ubaldo Jimenez, Manny Corpas). Meet the new Rox, organizational model.
The Rockies have reached the World Series with a payroll of $54 million. Their opponent has invested nearly three times that. Just as Colorado has re-invented itself, so have the Red Sox. Once the team that couldn’t win no matter what, Boston has become the club that expects to win no matter what and will spend whatever it takes.
The Red Sox trailed Cleveland 3-1 in the ALCS but outscored the Indians 30-5 over the final three games. (It was reminiscent of the 1996 NLCS, when the Braves faced a similar deficit and outscored St. Louis 32-1 thereafter.) Boston broke the much-ballyhooed Curse of the Bambino by overthrowing the Yankees and winning the World Series in 2004, and now the Sox see championships as manifest destiny.
Game 7 against Cleveland: Shortstop Julio Lugo, hugely unloved by Red Sox Nation, drops Kenny Lofton’s pop with Boston holding a one-run lead in the seventh inning. In olden days this would become the moment of undoing, the Bucky Dent/Bill Buckner moment. Instead the Sox are spared when coach Joel Skinner inexplicably holds Lofton at third base. See, times do change.
Don’t look for the Rockies to succumb meekly, but don’t look for them to keep winning. The eight-day hiatus will have a massive effect. The Rockies have enough hitters - almost an American League lineup, to invoke the highest form of praise - to make the Sox work, but Boston has two World Series MVPs (Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling) in its rotation. There’s your difference. Sox in six.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Comments
By Herschel Talker
October 23, 2007 9:31 PM | Link to this
Sox in six means more pain for Yankees fans!
By Bo
October 23, 2007 9:46 PM | Link to this
Good job Mark. I’ll still take the Rockies in 7. Whats the chance Red Sox trade COCO after WS maybe to Braves?
By NASCARfan
October 24, 2007 12:28 AM | Link to this
I’d love to see the Red Sox win. Yet another manager that Bobby cox is supposedly “superior” than gets his 2nd World Series ring, or one more than The Boob.
And before you morons even bring up the money excuses, Bobby Cox took very rich teams and very talented teams into the playoffs many times and choked.
Once again, the most overrated manager in the history of baseball is Bobby the Boob.
By DWG
October 24, 2007 12:29 AM | Link to this
Mark,
Nothing to do with your article. I didn’t even read it, I’m sure it was fantastic. Please, please, please do not do your annual UGA/FLA prediction. It always jinxes the dawgs. Thank you for your consideration.
By DWG
October 24, 2007 12:44 AM | Link to this
NASCARfan should stick to NASCAR.
By DWG
October 24, 2007 12:51 AM | Link to this
People like NASCAR annoy me. They do not realize just how hard it is for a team to get to the playoffs and win it all. It takes more than a manager to win games. Anyone who’s played baseball knows that the more talented team doesn’t always win 4 out of 7. Bobby has been a great manager and thank God there are real Braves fans out there that appreciate all he has done for the franchise. As far as world serise goes, I’ll watch again when the Braves come back in the spring.
By Champ
October 24, 2007 7:36 AM | Link to this
NASCARfan, you’re an idiot.
By Jerry
October 24, 2007 8:25 AM | Link to this
another team building from the farm system. We used to do that. I hope the Rockies take it all.
RED SUCKS SOX
By Bob
October 24, 2007 9:39 AM | Link to this
NASCARfan is an idiot on all the blogs he chooses to visit. He proclaims to be a Dawg fan which pains me if true. Then again, do you expect from someone who is always going around in circles making left hand turns?
By Face Reality
October 24, 2007 10:14 AM | Link to this
NASCARfan is correct and all you who sing Bobby’s praises represent what’s wrong with sports in the south. Cox had very competitive payrolls through 2002 and one of the best pitching rotations of all time in the 90’s yet he delivered one WS title. While the manager can’t hit, pitch, and field; he is responsible for putting the best players on the field at any given time. Cox is too loyal and continually started cold players over hot ones and got too hung up on matchups. He made numerous ridiculous substitutions during the playoff run. He was also a poor motivator of his teams as evidenced by their playoff record. Cox would have been fired after the 99’ season in any other major market but in Atlanta he gets hailed.
By Allen
October 24, 2007 12:11 PM | Link to this
The Rockies are everything that’s wrong with baseball’s playoff system. A team that played well for 1 month out of 6.5 months in the World Series? Like the marlins (twice) before them, they don’t even deserve to be playing past game 162.
By Orlando Rivera
October 24, 2007 12:57 PM | Link to this
Allen, it’s not how you start but how you finish. Just ask the Mets.
By Jim
October 24, 2007 1:34 PM | Link to this
Allen,
You are “everything that’s wrong” with baseball fans in the East - you do not look at all the teams in baseball. The Rockies had the same record as Philadelphia and a better record than the Cubs after 162 games. Like the Red Sox, Indians, Phillies, and D’Backs, they had only one month where they were not over .500 (the Cubs and Angels had 2 months where they were not over .500). And the Rockies did it in the toughest division in the NL. The Rockies have already beaten the Red Sox twice this year. The Rockies are the best fielding team in the history of baseball. The Rockies deserved to be in the playoffs as much as any of the four NL teams.
By George
October 24, 2007 1:54 PM | Link to this
Bradley please write an article that isn’t what every one else is writing! Grow a pair~!!!!
By Allen
October 24, 2007 2:55 PM | Link to this
Sorry Jim, but I’m old enough to remember when the TWO teams with the best records in their respective, non-interleague playing, no Division or Wild card teams leagues met in the World Series, which would be over by now.
I liked it better when ‘best in the league’ meant ‘best record over 162 games’ (or 154 but I’m not THAT old), not percentage of days with a >.500 record.
By Allen
October 24, 2007 3:03 PM | Link to this
And BTW Jim—if you read a little closer you’d see I suggested the Marlins, the 2004 Red Sox, and other Eastern teams weren’t deserving of the playoffs too.
The Rockies deserve to be there more than the Phils, Padres, and especially Cubs and maybe you could argue that interleage scheduling gave the Dbacks the 1-game advantage. But the fact is they, the (Eastern) Marlins in 1997 and 2003, the (Eastern) Red Sox in 2004 and a number of other teams only got a chance at the Series because of the expanded playoff format that allows up to 3 teams w/out the best record in the league a shot.
By Jim
October 24, 2007 4:19 PM | Link to this
Sorry Allen. I did not understand your point. I like the balanced schedule, win the pennant, go the the World Series world as well. Alas, that time has past us by.
By Me
October 24, 2007 5:36 PM | Link to this
The team with the hottest pitching will win just like every other World Series. Whitey Herzog was right in that the Series should be played in 7 straight days. This would bring the 4th and 5th starter into play. And of course Bradley is correct on one thing, Bud Selig is a complete and total ninny.
By Jon
October 24, 2007 5:54 PM | Link to this
Fans in the east have no idea about the Rockies. It’s time to play ball. Boston is going down. Rockies in 5!