The WGOM

ROX Girl on the Rockies

October 11th, 2007 by SBG

The NLCS has a surprising matchup this year with Colorado and Arizona hooking up in a match between two Western Division teams that came into the league back in the 1990s. I am happy to have an interview with Rox Girl, who runs the Purple Row Rockies Blog. I am hoping that she'll stop by and answer questions throughout the day. Thank you very much for helping us out, Rox Girl, and now here's the interview (after the jump).

One of the things we've talked about at SBG Nation is how amazing the run that Colorado put on to end the season. The 2006 Twins had a similar run, but they plugged in Francisco Liriano and changed the left side of their infield. So there was a big change. What the heck happened for the Rockies?

You've heard the cliche, that sometimes you have to be both lucky and good to win things? I think for a run like the Rockies are on, you have to up both of those by a few degrees, as the team has been both extremely lucky (Matt Holliday using the jedi force to touch home plate) and extremely good (we did beat around Jake freakin' Peavy and Trevor Hoffman that game) over the last three weeks. I think several key things happened in the second half to transform the team from a ho-hum mediocre NL contender into what's arguably the best team in the league. One, like your team in 2006, we've gotten a lot of help from young pitching studs, in our case it's Ubaldo Jimenez and Franklin Morales. Two, journeymen Josh Fogg and Mark Redman have turned into these wise old pitchers that defy logic and their given lack of abilities with the way they fool hitters now compared to two or three months ago. I don't know how long we can count on that continuing, but luckily neither may have to start in the playoffs as we get Aaron Cook back from injury this week. I think other than that, Kazuo Matsui is probably underappreciated as an offensive spark and at least fairly decent guy to get on base and cause havoc, and we got him back from injury late too. One other thing. Clint Hurdle has many faults as a manager, but he does a really good job with a deep bench, and when rosters were expanded to 40, he had the luxury of situational substituting to his heart's content. In the playoffs, he's kept it up only with a shorter bench, so we were probably lucky that we swept the Phillies and got this extra rest, as I think it was clear by game three that a lot of our key guys were running out of gas.

I'll admit it. I picked the Phillies to take the Rockies. But, in retrospect, the NL West was obviously the class of the NL. How surprised were you, though, that the Rockies absolutely dominated the Phillies?

I wrote in a post yesterday that what surprised me the most was how Philadelphia never adjusted at the plate while our pitchers were bringing a remarkably consistent approach to almost all the at bats. I gave credit to our advance scouts for finding some weaknesses our arms were able to exploit and to our catcher, Yorvit Torrealba for calling the games. When you hold the second best offense in the league to a sub .300 OBP, I just don't think you can chalk that entirely up to all these once hot Philadelphia hitters going cold at once, and you have to give credit to the Rockies pitching staff and the people who told them what they needed to do. That said, the team has been beating some very good clubs over this stretch, sweeping the Padres and the Dodgers (twice) while winning two of three against Arizona, so in that sense, that we were able to handle another good team with ease didn't surprise me much at all. People don't realize how strong the Rockies are as a baseball team. We have five of the top sixty in the MLB in VORP in our everyday lineup, our pitching is underrated and much better than people realize (lowest ERA in the NL post All-Star Break) and I think pundits overlooked that heading into the Philadelphia series.

The Rockies, surprisingly, are in the middle of the pack in runs allowed in the NL. What gives? Is it the humidor, or are the Rockies starting to develop some young pitchers?

It's part humidor, part awesome pitching, part lucky pitching, as I referred to in the first answer. I think our first three starters (and Aaron Cook once he's back) go unnoticed, particularly the two rookies, Morales and Jimenez. Morales has already broken the franchise record streak for scoreless innings (it was only 17.2, but this is Colorado we're talking about) and Jimenez followed a one hit six inning gem against the Diamondbacks on Sunday with his three hit performance against the Phillies on Saturday. Both those games were at Coors Field. Both Jimenez and Morales can dial it up to near 100 for their fastballs, but have equally impressive offspeed and breaking pitches. I've followed the Rockies since 1993, and the Rockies with the humidor since 2002, and I can tell you that we have never had a collection of pitchers like this. Like you folks had high hopes for Matt Garza, Scott Baker et al this season, I'm hoping it will only get better for the Rockies in 2008, by the way, as we have more very good arms on the way, but you know how that can go.

What should every fan know about the Rockies that only the hardcore Rockies fans know?

That humidor or no, there's an upper limit to individual scoring and hitting at altitude and for some reason, it's not that much higher than the same limit at sea level. Because of the humidor, this limit has gone down, but I still see so often comments of fans from other teams that their star player would put up .400, 60 double, 60 HR seasons at Coors and it's usually simply not true. Star players who are good at hitting anything anywhere will see a much smaller spike than an average guy who can't hit breaking pitches but can turn on fastballs (like a Dante Bichette or Vinny Castilla back in the day) at lower elevations will.

Evaluate the Rockies GM and manager. What are their strengths? What drives you crazy about them?

Dan O'Dowd put together this team, and he deserves all the credit for that. Hurdle's in game management is absolutely batty, but he's a fine motivator and he's good at bringing out the best in his players. I know I have less of an issue with O'Dowd than most Rockies fans, and while I go either way with Hurdle depending on what his latest dumb in game decision was, I really don't think he costs the team more that way than he makes up behind the scenes. Talk to me about that again after this series and I might change my mind, though.

What's the Rockies blogging community like? What are your favorite Rockies blogs? Are there ever any blogging get togethers?

Purple Row and the team at Up in the Rockies (MVN) are probably the best glass half-full types but neither totally drink the kool-aid, so I don't think we're company shills. I really like to read and I think you have to mix in the acerbic wit and skeptical eye of Mark Donohoe at Bad Altitude (Baseball Toaster) to get a more balanced perspective, however. Outside the blogs, the best forum community for the Rox is at Fanhome. We really haven't had any get togethers since there are so many far flung correspondents. Maybe we should change that.

It's been a rough patch for the Rockies before this season. What's the state of baseball in Denver overall? How much does this post season help?

This postseason couldn't come soon enough. The mobs were forming and about ready to burn down the stadium it seems in May, the city had ignored the Rockies for several years so the anger was actually kind of inspiring in its way, but our run has quieted the masses. Now, because everybody feels kind of guilty for not realizing how good this team was, they're trying to make up for it in the post-season (it has to help that the Broncos are flopping) which will certainly boost our revenue for next year as well. That's a great sign in a middle market..

The Rockies are quite familiar with the D-Backs. Give us a little scouting report. What worries you about the D-Backs?

The D-backs aren't going to be an easy team to beat. They have the single best pitcher in the series in Brandon Webb, home-field advantage (that's significant at the ChaFe) and the bullpen that could be dominating at times. Their hitters -though a little deficient in contact skills still- are all capable of hitting it out at any time, so you can't really overlook anybody in that line-up and they will make you pay for mistakes. Because of the bullpen, it only takes a couple of those mistakes to put you in a bad spot. The other starters besides Webb are lacking, at best, but the batting skills of Owings and to some extent Livan Hernandez will make it seem like you're playing against an AL team that's allowed to use the DH while you are not. Too many off days in the series will allow them to use only the Lyon and Valverde part to the pen and not the really weak parts if the starters go deep, so I'll want the Rockies to get to their starters early. I really think the D-backs are the inferior team, but they have enough advantages that make calling a Rockies win in the series tricky. I think if you play them enough, you can expose their weaknesses better, so I actually think a long six or seven game series favors us, but it would take some luck in game one against Webb for us to win a short four or five game series. These two teams will develop a very heated rivalry over the next few seasons. When you have this much talent on either side, and they will be knocking each other out of contention year after year, bitterness is bound to develop.

What do you think will happen in the NLCS?

I'm already answering this question, so I'll continue. I don't think I'll actually predict for the D-backs to collapse (as I have been doing all year, and coincidently, as I did in 2001 - I too have underrated them, but that's just because I don't like them) and instead say that they are a very good, underrated team that's impervious to collapse. I hope the Rockies win.

How about the ALCS? Who would you like to see in the World Series, assuming you get that far?

If the Rockies can get that far, I kind of would like to see Cleveland just to hear Rupert Murdoch's head explode over the ratings vacuum that the World Series will be. The Rockies already beat the Sox twice at Fenway this season (two games I went to, actually) so I'd like to see how we do up against Sabathia and Carmona now.

This entry was posted by SBG on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under MLB. It is one of 2465 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.