Patience pays off for Rockies
Posted: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 6:06 PM
So who are the Colorado Rockies?
And how have they compiled a 24-7 run since a loss on Sept. 1?
Their presence in a NLCS sends a fabulous message to baseball. This past month has been by far the best in the 15-year history of the Colorado franchise. The Rockies had never won more than 83 games in a season. They captured the wild card in the truncated 1995 season and lived off the “Blake Street Bombers” offense for their first six years after joining the National League in 1993.
Then they crashed. For years they searched for the “blueprint” to winning at altitude. The Galarraga-Walker-Bichette-Castilla bashers couldn’t hit on the road. The Hampton-Neagle-Kile approach of paying for top-flight pitching was a disaster. An ownership change created unrest and a need to unload salaries. Finally, largely out of necessity, the Rockies leaned on player development -- for pitchers as well as hitters. Mix in a large dose of patience and the payoff has arrived this fall.
The important word in the last sentence is patience. This team is not new, other than shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and starting pitchers Franklin Morales and Ubaldo Jimenez. These Rockies have been growing together, out of the bright lights, for a few years. Matt Holliday (drafted in 1998), Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe (2000), and Jeff Francis and Ryan Spilborghs (2002) have had the chance to learn and lose together without the intense scrutiny of larger markets.
This year toss in Tulowitzki, the game’s premier young shortstop, a defensive gem who drove in 99 runs and the emergence of the game’s next closer from Panama, Manny Corpas, and the Rockies were poised to advance. Contending was one thing, winning a whole different step, which was related to a last quality: boldness.
When the Rockies started to make their move in mid-September, manager Clint Hurdle was willing to start the 23-year-old Jimenez and the 21-year-old Morales. Hurdle had already made a tough switch in closers, demoting All-Star Brian Fuentes for Corpas. It’s the same boldness that highlighted Arizona’s division-title season as Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin inserted 19-year-old Justin Upton into the lineup in September after showing the patience to stand behind Stephen Drew as the young shortstop struggled.
That’s why this NLCS is so good for baseball. It tells all to stop the madness of chasing journeymen to all corners of the earth hoping to squeeze out of them one more win or one more at-bat. There is a place for the veteran (i.e., Marlon Anderson’s second half with the Mets or even Paul Byrd’s gutsy win last night for Cleveland), but the new message is to “Trust your talent.”
Talent before experience. It has worked for the two NLCS teams. And it worked for the big spenders like the Yankees (Chamberlain, Hughes, Kennedy, Cabrera), Mets (Milledge, Pelfrey, Gomez), Angels (Willits, Kendrick, Kotchman), and Red Sox (Pedroia, Buchholz, Papelbon). It tells people that the game is more than home runs. The Rockies are a scintillating defensive team, their 67 errors the fewest in both leagues. It tells people that the game can be played with energy, speed, and enthusiasm as well as the stability provided by veterans Todd Helton in Colorado and Tony Clark and Livan Hernandez in Arizona.
Baseball is awash in cash, but teams are treading a different path. They are locking up their youth, hoarding power bats and arms, and treading more cautiously into free agency. Yes, I know the Barry Zito, Alfonso Soriano, and Gil Meche contracts of last winter scream otherwise, but I see those as a product of limited supply and high demand from teams looking to pacify their fans. There will always be those handfuls of signings, and those teams will rarely win.
