Saving the Worst For Last

A major league baseball season is a collection of 162 games, the composite results of which determine your standing. As Rockies fans have found out over the past few years, a bad stretch is not something that is insurmountable by a good stretch somewhere else. An 18-27 start in 2007 and a 20-32 start in 2009 were overcome by prolonged good stretches elsewhere in the season.

2010 on the other hand, never got that horrendous start, but never had the prolonged stretch of winning either, without a corresponding bad part. Part of that was because of the Jekyll and Hyde facet of their Road vs. Home performance--even more pronounced than usual. In the end there was just one winning road trip and one losing home stand.

Injuries are a factor, but then they always are. Having 4 of 5 starters and the closer down early didn't allow the Rockies to get a good feel for the rotation until about mid-season. Last year's amazing success of the starters avoiding injury, wasn't going to happen again, but 2010 was the Yang to last year's Yin. Perhaps 2011 will be somewhere in-between.

The injuries did lead to us Rockies fans getting a glimpse of the future. Jhoulys Chacin, Esmil Rogers, and Greg Smith had significant starts, and the 22 year-old Chacin looks like a mainstay in the Rotation going into 2011. We also got extended looks at Eric Young, Jr., Johnny Herrera, as well as a glimpse of Chris Nelson, and Michael McKenry.

This team was projected to win the NL West by a lot of the experts, and came up short. You will hear a lot of blame going to Dan O'Dowd for not making a move in July when San Diego and San Francisco were getting help. But looking at the Transactions San Francisco made, there were no major players, except for possibly Jose Guillen on the bench. They also take a starting lineup into the postseason with 5 of the 8 over 30. Their pitching staff is still rather young, but they will need to rebuild the offense around Posey and Sandoval in the next few years.

Meanwhile, the Padres major move in July got them Miguel Tejada and Ryan Ludwick. The Padres led the giants by 3.5 games on July 29th, but with their moves have gone 28-31 and will miss the playoffs again.

But even without the help of July trades, the Rockies still made a run, albeit late, and ran out of gas too soon. But they did not mortgage the future for one Division Title. They are 21-15 since August 22 6.5 games better than the Padres who were in 1st place at the time, and only 1.5 games worse than the Giants in that span.

The Rockies gave us excitement this year--a no-hitter by Ubaldo Jimenez who also flirted with 20 wins, and Cy Young; a 9 run ninth inning against the Cardinals to complete a 6-run deficit comeback win; A 12 Run inning against the Cubs all scoring with 2 outs; Troy Tulowitzki's Sizzling September; and Carlos Gonzalez' breakout year and contending for the Triple Crown.

There are certainly moves to makes and evaluations to consider, and I'll look at those later, but as disappointing as the finish has been, the 2010 Rockies leave behind a lot of great memories for us.