Turn Around, Bright Eyes

The Rockies have been spiraling downward for about a month now, and last night for the first time since June 20th, recorded a win after a win.  The naysayers are talking about them falling out of the postseason, and it's still possible they could drop from the Wild Card altogether.

However there is a lot of baseball yet to be played.  The Cubs have won 4 straight games since the All-Star Break and have now closed to within 5.5 games of the Rockies, but are only 3.5 games behind the Division leader Brewers. They meet head to head next weekend.

It's easy to scoreboard watch, and panic, but the reality is the Rockies have to go out and win their game and then worry about the others.  Over the month long stretch (and I still maintain the slump goes back to late May, when there were signs of a slump but they managed to win after a couple of 3 game losing streaks,) the Rockies have done some irritating things that have led to their losses.

Pitching--Everyone talks about the walks, but the bigger problem is lack of clean innings where nobody gets on base.  There always seems to be traffic every inning which leads to stress pitching.   Even in their last two wins, there have been only 4 clean innings, while another inning only had 3 batters and included a Double play after a hit by pitch.   The Walks need to be cut down as well.

Hitting--Strikeouts need to be cut down severely The Rockies have struck out about 1 in 4 at bats, which is nearly 9 times a game.  Not putting the ball in play is one of the biggest reasons to not score.  Making contact has to be a big emphasis for the rest of the season.

Fielding--In the first 73 games, the Rockies committed errors in only 20 of them.  In the past 22 games they have committed an error in 11 of them going 3-8 in those games.