Melissa Meador is the sports editor of The Reflector. She can be contacted at [email protected].After winning 21 of their last 22 games, it’s obvious the Colorado Rockies are one team that actually lives up to the hype.
Those wins haven’t come easily to the Rocks, having gone through some of the best teams in the National League to reach the 2007 World Series.
First there was the fight for the NL Wild Card in a one-game, winner-take-all matchup with the San Diego Padres.
Despite the fact that the question of whether or not Matt Holliday actually touched home plate for the winning run still lingers, the Rockies came out on top and have been on a tear ever since.
Easily sweeping the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL Division Series and the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NLCS, the Rocks now have their eyes on baseball’s top prize.
But they have to get through the Red Sox first, a team who tied for the best record in the majors and who have been the odds-on favorites for most of the year to win it all.
The Sox may boast the arms needed to take down the Rockies, especially in ace Josh Beckett and lights-out closer Jonathan Papelbon, but the Rocks definitely have the hot bats to challenge them.
Holliday, an obvious front-runner for NL Most Valuable Player, led not only the club but the entire National League with a .340 batting average and 137 total RBIs.
Veteran first baseman Todd Helton is also swinging a hot bat these days after finally reaching the playoffs for the first time in his 10-year career. A career .332 hitter, Helton’s solo homer and two RBIs helped lift the Rocks over the Padres to snatch the Wild Card and be eligible for postseason glory.
Rookie of the Year candidate and Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki is not only a potent bat in their lineup but also an asset defensively as double plays have helped Rockies’ pitchers out of a number of jams thus far in the postseason.
While the Rockies may not have a 20-game winner in their pitching staff like the Sox do, they do have a few fresh arms that could prove valuable.
Left hander Jeff Francis leads the Rockies’ starters with 17 wins and sported a 4.22 earned run average during the regular season. Francis has sacrificed only three earned runs in his two starts this postseason.
More than a week of rest surely will not hurt the Rockies either, especially their pitching staff. However, it didn’t prove to be a factor in last year’s series. The Detroit Tigers came into last year’s matchup with the St. Louis Cardinals fresh off six days of rest, but their bats never came alive again and they were defeated in just five games.
If there are still any doubts in anyone’s mind that the Rockies are the team to beat, look only to the early season series between the Rocks and the Sox.
The young Rockies roared into Boston taking two out of the three games and outscoring Boston 20-5.
During that series, Colorado handed Beckett his first loss of the season, had a grand slam from Atkins and had a strong outing from Francis against some of baseball’s toughest hitters.