The Dog Days of Summer Approach

Well, basketball has finally wrapped up (mercifully… I thought a Lakers/Celtics final might interest me… but notsomuch.), hockey has skated off into the night, faintly smelling of raw octopus, and football training camps are still some weeks off. That can only mean one thing for a sports fan - the dog days of summer, the days where sports television outside baseball is relegated to obscure triathalons and highlights shows. Well, and the occasional pro-beach-volleyball tournament, the sport with the highest level of nudity on tv. Seriously, why isn’t the “Spice” channel picking up these tournaments?

For non-baseball fans, it is the beginning of a long summer of discontent. For the baseball junkies, it’s just the beginning of a time that no matter how old you are, makes you think back to the good ol’ days when baseball was just baseball, when your favorite players locker wasn’t stacked deeper in little plastic bottles than a Walgreen’s pharmacy counter, when a homerun hitter’s celebration consisted of simply trotting the bases, and your team was your team, no matter how bad they were.

For me, summer is probably my least favorite season. I’m one of those freaks that can’t handle the ridiculously hot weather. I hate it. I love spring and fall, and winter isn’t so bad… I’d rather live in a crazy cold climate than an equatorial sticky hot climate. Fortunately, Colorado brings 4 distinct seasons, so the summer weather is temporary. But as for the baseball… I love baseball. I love being at the ballpark, I love the smell of the food, the sound of the crowd (minus the drunk guy), and the feel of the game - knowing that the game that is being played in front of me is officially part of major league history. A tiny part, for sure, but history nonetheless. I love nothing more than to think that my son will have a hometown team, something I never had. He’ll never know a time without the Rockies… they are as historically valid in the grand scheme of baseball to him as the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals. To him, it always has been and always will be the Rockies. I hope the memories we are creating for him are as pleasant in adulthood as my memories of driving the 150 miles up Interstate 5 to see Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson rock the Kingdome and lead the Mariners into their first shot at relevance in their short history.

So how are the Colorado boys of summer faring? It’s been a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde kind of season. In the couple weeks since I lost steam on blogging due to some personal and family crises, things have taken a sharp turn. Jeff Baker suddenly looks like a superhero utility infielder. Matt Holliday is back, and while not overwhelming, is swinging a good bat. Taveras is finally starting to get on base every now and then, and Quintanilla has probably secured a roster spot for the time being as well. Tulo rejoins the team tonight, and Barmes won’t be far behind. On the mound, Cook has stayed consistently dominant (All-Star, anyone?), Francis is just now starting to throw with a hair of confidence (though I’m still not convinced… anyone can be confident with 10 runs of support), Ubaldo is sizzling, if not a bit inconsistent, and the back end of the rotation doesn’t look as scary as it once did.

So what’s the difference? Why did this team just a few weeks ago look like the worst in the majors (the distinction that clearly now belongs to my beloved Seattle Mariners… talk about a mess), now look like a team with contention possibilities that is only a couple solid win streaks away from battling for the playoffs again? What brought back the confidence? All through May, you expected them to find ways to lose. Now, they are becoming more than just a shadow of last fall’s team… you expect the clutch hit. You expect the big defensive play. In fact, since the beginning of June, the Rockies have posted the best win-loss record in baseball.

Well, I don’t claim to know the difference, but I can float a theory or two.

One theory is that the weight of expectation and a winter of thinking about it made for a team that lacked any mental looseness. Simply stated, they were trying too hard.

Clearly, the pitching is starting to settle down. The hitters are starting to see pitches. This could be a result of such a bad start lifting the weight of being a projected league leader. Or it could be a result of my second theory…

They’ve never had to make this adjustment before. The fall run to the World Series opened the eyes of the league to this team, and the scouting book on Tulo and Holliday and Francis are as thick as any player in the majors. Teams learned how to play these guys. Did you see how they pitched Tulo before he got hurt? Always to his weakness, the inside pitch. Granted, he can turn on a pitch as well as anyone, but when you have a slight chink in your armour, it’s tough to put up all-star numbers when you’re constantly being attacked in that place. The Rockies have never had such a successful season that they had the scouts breaking them down in such detail with the singular goal of shutting them down. So this was a new adjustment. How do these players respond to being constantly attacked at the weaknesses that the Red Sox exposed in front of the entire baseball world? Perhaps it’s just taken 55-60 games to adjust.

If the Rockies can take this trend of winning series and putting up runs into the All-Star break, we could find the team flirting with .500 and inducing a little bit of a nervous sweat from the Diamondbacks. No one wants this team to get red hot… 21 of 22 may not happen again, but that’s a clue of what this team is capable of, and there’s not a team in baseball (save perhaps the Red Sox) who wants to be a part of that again.

All that being said, I’m still cautiously optimistic. I want to see what they can do against the real class of the NL - namely, the Phillies, Marlins, and Cubs. They couldn’t touch the Cubbies or the Phillies before, and they have a ways to go before they can compete in that class. But until then, I’m happy to see that they are starting to win series, beat up on teams they should beat up, and generally just look like a winning ball club again.