If it hadn’t been a typical win for the Chicago White Sox, there might be reason to genuflect before the humidor.
There has been an inordinate number of days this season when Coors Field hasn’t been itself. It wasn’t just that the White Sox defeated the Rockies by the relatively paltry score of 2-1 on a summer-like night Tuesday before a crowd of 21,576.
It was that both teams struggled to hit the ball to the outfield with any kind of authority.
Each team had just five hits. All that open space beneath all that thin air. Five hits each.
“Nothing surprises me with our pitching staff,” said White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, whose 1,000th career hit, a double, started his team’s winning two-run rally in the fourth. “Our pitchers are capable of holding teams down anywhere.”
It’s one thing for the White Sox to win without hitting – they have won a remarkable nine games when scoring three runs or fewer, as telling a statistic as any of their record that has reached 20 games above .500.
But two 2-1 games played at Coors Field the past eight days?
“The ball’s been traveling a little different,” said Todd Helton, the Rockies’ slumping star who had another hitless night. “But that’s no excuse.”
Ever since the players association, MLB and the Rockies reached an agreement on the Coors Field humidor a couple months into the 2002 season, the computerized settings have been placed at 70 degrees and 50 percent humidity. There have been some 12-4 and 8-7 scores recently at Coors Field, but overall, scoring at altitude is down.
There has been an average of 12.07 runs per game at Coors Field this year, a 19.6 percent drop from 1996, when the Blake Street Bombers and a Rockies pitching staff struggling through season-long injuries to Bill Swift and Bret Saberhagen combined for 15.02 runs a game.
Whether the scores at Coors Field are 2-1 or 12-11, the Rockies are 19 games below .500 at 19-38.
The Rockies’ Byung-Hyun Kim entered the game with an 0-4 record and 7.04 ERA, although most of that ugliness occurred while pitching out of the bullpen. Kim seems to have the yips about pitching in relief, but he has been solid to splendid in his three starts.
Against a team that has the majors’ best record at 39-19, Kim allowed three hits while striking out a career-high seven in six innings. The difference in a well-pitched game between Kim and the White Sox’s Jose Contreras was a judgment call by second-base umpire Ed Montague.
The White Sox played “Ozzie Ball” in the top of the fourth, connecting on three hits and a stolen base for two runs. In the bottom half, the Rockies came within an inch, maybe less, of tying it. With two out, Garrett Atkins lifted a flyball so high off the right-center wall, it hit the top of the yellow line. The rule says a ball must clear the yellow line for a homer. Preston Wilson scored but the way the ball rocketed back in, Rockies interim manager Jamie Quirk wondered if it had hit something beyond the padded yellow line and if Atkins should have scored, too.
After viewing replays from a variety of angles, Quirk was satisfied his team lost fair and square.
“He got it right,” Quirk said.
Perhaps in the pre-humidor days, Atkins’ ball would have cleared the yellow line by plenty.
ROCKIES REPORT
Rockies fans missing chance to see Big Hurt
It hardly seems fair. At long last, the prodigious-hitting Frank Thomas is at hitter-haven Coors Field. Yet with the possible exception of another pinch-hit tonight, local fans will hardly get the chance to see him.
“It don’t click,” Thomas said, who struck out looking Tuesday night in a pinch-hitting appearance in the seventh. “I’m an American League player now. Earlier in my career it would have clicked but the last three years have been like this.”
A benched Thomas runs counter to the primary purpose behind interleague play, which is to allow fans in one league to watch star players from the other. Thomas, a career .308 hitter with 437 homers, has been the Chicago White Sox’s biggest star of the past 15 years, yet he won’t start one game in this series because designated hitters aren’t used in National League parks. If ever there were a reason to tweak interleague play rules, this is it.
“It would be nice, but I don’t complain about it,” Thomas said. “I’m on the best team in baseball right now and it’s about winning.”
Wild side
The Rockies remain in position to capture the dubious pitching triple crown, as they entered play Tuesday leading the NL in walks (264), wild pitches (32) and hit batsmen (33). The last time an NL team finished first in those three categories, the 1978 Atlanta Braves posted a 69-93 record.
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-820-5440 or mklis@denverpost.com.
