Two bits of bad news and one bit of good came out of last night's game.
The bad news is we got our heads handed to us after we came out flat, as I expected. Call it another traveling day, exhaustion, acclimatization to the altitude, whatever. Rockies fans will simply call it another beatdown. Truly, we couldn't have come out more flatfooted. Kyle Freeland, again a starter hovering around a five ERA, beat us again by allowing four runs over seven innings. By the end of the fourth inning, it was already 6-0, Rocks, and they were cruising. We had a chance to knock out Freeland in the fifth, but he wiggled out of trouble, then pitched two more innings for good measure.
The good news is we are still in first place. As to the second bit of bad news: we won't be if we don't accept the challenge a supposedly lesser team is posing here. I honestly can't stand playing the Rockies. There is nothing glorious about that franchise (which is what they would say about ours, arguably), nor do they have charisma or the pizzazz that the Cubs or the Dodgers or the Giants have. They will probably never win a World Series (again, something that has been the mantra about our franchise since we came into existence). Too many of their players were Coors phenomena, only to evaporate in thin air (pun intended) once they had to hit closer to sea level. I can't think of a single kid who is jumping up and down going, "Yay! We're going to see the ROCKIES today." The problem is, they are a pro team, and these games count just as much as the others. After the big city lights of Chicago, you now have the blah of the Rockies. That's why they are still beating us. The formula for playing less talented teams than you is not hard: match the intensity of the lesser foe, then wait for class to kick in. That's not happened. Not last year, and certainly not this year so far.
We lost that game in the first four innings, nothing but zeroes from our bats. Our liability is not coming out swinging, which only builds up their starter, whoever he is. We just thrashed a Cubs bullpen that might have been transformed, man for man, from their Iowa AAA club. We tried that again in Denver, this "oh, we'll be fine, just give us a few innings to catch our bearings." Doesn't work that way. And the Rockies will continue to own us until we adjust that attitude in their altitude.
Of note was McKenzie Gore's poor performance. Gore has now lost to the Rockies twice, although anything is possible at Coors. That's twice in a row he's been taken to the shed. I'm not concerned here, but I am very much aware of what is going on here. Let's see how the kid can deal with that type of adversity going forward.
The Braves had their 14-game winning streak finally snapped, by the Cubs, would you believe it. Nick Martinez is next. Can he pull one out for us at Coors?
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