Colorado Rockies

In the worst division in baseball last year, the Colorado Rockies were the worst team finishing with a 67-95 record marking their fifth straight year with a sub-.500 record.

Pitching

Lets not beat about the bush, being a pitcher for the Rockies might be the toughest assignment any player can have and if a guy were to post an ERA there of less than 3.50 they should win the Cy without argument. It is easily summed up by Jeff Francis and his rookie year. Francis had a good rookie season looking every bit a major leaguer and won 14 games which is great for a rookie but you wouldn’t think it was a good year if you looked at his 5.68 ERA. That is Coors for you.

Perhaps the only exception to this is Aaron Cook whose career as a Rockie has been abbreviated by injuries but over 13 starts he posted an excellent ERA of 3.67 to go with a 7-2 record.

If not for the rarefied air a rotation of Francis, Cook, Jason Jennings, Byung-Yung Kim and Josh Fogg would probably be a fairly good one. Similarly the bullpen where Jose Mesa, Ray King and Jaime Cerda have come in to help incumbents Mike DeJean and closer Brian Fuentes and if there weren’t all with the Rockies I would be going on about how good that quintet looked with King being one of the top situational lefties around and how Mesa has done a great job for Pittsburgh as their closer the last couple of seasons and how DeJean and Fuentes had done good jobs last year but this is Colorado and it doesn’t take much for it all to go horribly wrong.

Defence

Yorvit Torrealba should finally be given a job to show full time what he can do and he is a good receiver with a strong arm and should give the team a firm base to build their infield upon…at least until Chris Iannetta comes up in 2007.

Up the middle Clint Barmes and Aaron Miles are both solid fielders but nothing special (it’s a good thing Troy Tulowitzki should be ready in 2007), similarly Garrett Atkins…well actually he’s not that good (Ian Stewart should be ready in 2007). At least there’s Todd Helton who is still a quality fielder (no one is taking his spot in 2007 or any time soon).

Matt Holliday is still very rough in left and Cory Sullivan is not too great in centre either. Brad Hawpe is serviceable in right.

Offence

Cory Sullivan is a solid average lead-off man with an OK OBP (.343) and some speed (12 steals) but on a good team he’d be a fourth outfielder.

Everyone was going ape about Clint Barmes until he got injured and when he returned after a long lay off he came back to earth and was the player we always thought he was i.e. a solid and smart contact hitter with occasional pop who slots nicely into the second spot of any line-up.

Garrett Atkins came into the year with the reputation of being a solid hitter who would reap the benefits of The Coors Effect and put up good power numbers. He hit 13 homeruns. Normally I would be saying thank God for Helton but for some reason Helton was almost a non-entity at the beginning of last year (compared to his usually heady standards). He still posted a customary large number of walks (106) which got his .320 average to a .445 OBP. Point is, Todd Helton is still a great all-around hitter and the beginning of last year was a blip.

Rookie Watch

Come back in 2007 when Tulowitzki, Iannetta and the truly studly Ian Stewart should be ready.

Management

Dan O’Dowd is a truly schizophrenic GM. He’s gone from building teams in the Oakland A’s mode to ones built on speed, back to the A’s and pretty much everything in between. He’s also offered stupid money to pitchers in the hope they can counter The Coors Effect and give their team a chance at keeping games from having silly scores and those pitchers have generally gotten out of town as quickly as they could.

In a nutshell he knows he has a problem building a winning team that plays half its games at altitude and has no idea how to solve it but to be fair I’m not sure anyone does.

Clint Hurdle returns for a fifth year and has yet to have a team with a winning record. Its hard to judge him as he has never really had a great team but he is developing a reputation for being quick to make pitching changes which really puts a strain on the bullpen.

Outlook

Basically the pitching is heavily handicapped and the batting line-up has most of its best bits still in the post. It was a tough year last year and it will prove to be a tough year this year too.