A Complete Game: Rockies 2, Tigers 0

The Rockies' main problem this year hasn't been starting pitching. Sure, the starters have had their fair share of bad outings, but every pitcher, and more importantly every rotation has a few bad days. So far, if we can say one good thing about the Rockies' pitching, it's that our starters have not even come close to being the worst rotation in the league. And this has all come without Aaron Cook, who was supposed to be our ace this year.

No, the problem for our beloved Rockies has occured well beyond when the starters have been pulled, in the realm of middle relief, specifically in the dreaded 7th inning. Rockies middle-innings pitchers have struggled all season, and their failure has been the defining point of another loosing season.

Not so tonight, however, and most of that credit goes to Mr. Wright, who pitched 7 and a 1/3 scoreless innings, and dropped his ERA below 6 with this outing. If there's one weakness with our starters, it's been durability. The five starters average a mere 5.74 innings, which means more games than not, the Rockies have had to break into the bullpen early, forcing pitchers like Dohhman (ERA 18.9) to throw. Jamie's stellar, lengthened performance tonight behind a mere 2 runs of offense allowed the Rockies to cut past some of their not-so-successful relievers, and go straight to 8th-inning ace Jay Wotasik, and the recently dynamite Brian Fuentes, both of whom pitched well, allowing no runs.

What I'm getting at here, is that for the first time that I've seen this season, the Rockies may just have played an all-around complete game. Though they didn't get much offense, they didn't have to, because behind stellar defensive play from the likes of recently-hot Garret Atkins behind solid, prolonged starting pitching carried the team to victory. The main component behind Rockie failure this year has been the un-timely error, coupled with bad middle-relief. Today, the Rockies avoided all of that in a tight game, and were able to pull a tight one out when it counted. How many times have we been able to say that this year?

Overall, I'm beginning to like the way the Rockies have been playing, even against the White Sox, who swept them. In all three Sox games, the starting pitching was great, and the score was close going into the later innings. I'm also seeing the Rockies' hitting develop. Though the White Sox incredible staff seemed to shut us down, we're getting timelier, clutch hits from people like Corey Sullivan, and our outs are getting more productive too, with guys like Dustin Mohr hitting groundballs to move a runner to third. Though the Rockies may not be putting everything together nightly yet, they played a good series against the league-leading White Sox, and looked like a Major League team. I've seen plenty of other series where it's looked like the Rockies are a AAA team trying to hang with teams not nearly as good as the Sox. Whatever the result of the season, our young faces are finally coming together into a baseball team, and based on the latest ballgames (which have been really good games), I think we're going to enjoy the rest of the season. At least, it's looking better than this Monday.

Gabe