Miserable May Ends 8-21

I've watched baseball for a long time, and I can never remember a team with so much promise having such a horrible month. I've seen bad teams have months like this, but this is hardly a bad team--or is it?

A lot of people are talking about turning the page to June, as if somehow magically with a new month comes new ability or luck. There is nothing that I've witnessed lately that indicates this team will play better. In fact, as much as I hate to say it, this team looks beat.

1. Gonzalez and Fowler collide in the outfield on Monday, letting a ball drop. This is not only fundamentally unsound, the fact that it happened 50 games into the season is inexcusable, and indicates lack of focus.

2. Troy Tulowitski is constantly chirping with the home plate umpires about bad calls, some warranted, but many are good pitches. This is not a leader, it's a chronic complainer. Man up and take the lead. Also a lack of focus.

3. Seth Smith overruns 2nd base with the play in front of him last week. Smith has been arguably one of a very few bright lights this season both in the field and at bat, but this is also showing a lack of focus.

4. Pitchers have very few "clean" innings. By that, I mean 1, 2, 3. They rely a lot on Double Plays to get them out of jams, but if the pitchers wouldn't constantly get into jams, especially with the significant rise in walks this past month. I'd say rarely do the Rockies have more than 2 defensive 1, 2, 3 innings in a game. In the meantime offensively, they seem to go 1,2,3--5 or 6 times a game.

There is absolutely no outward signs of life in the veterans or manager of this team. The one spark that I see is the exuberance of Eric Young, Jr, Chris Nelson, and a couple of the new pitchers they've brought up in the past week.

The season is not yet lost, but this team has to turn everything around quickly and that will be a daunting task. The saving grace is that no other team in the NL West has yet to run away yet. At this point last year the Rockies were also 4 games behind, but were at 27-24. In 2009, they were 20-29, 13.5 games behind and in 2007, they were 25-29 and 6.5 games out.