OAKLAND, Calif. — Sitting in an airport, waiting for my flight back home, I mulled the state of the Rockies and arrived at the following conclusions:
• Dan O’Dowd takes a lot of heat, but the general manager’s deal that sent Matt Holliday to Oakland and brought Huston Street, Carlos Gonzalez and Greg Smith (someday, maybe) to the Mile High City is starting to look like a masterstroke.
• Holliday, with a big push out the door by agent Scott Boras, was never going to stay with the Rockies. Now Holliday is in limbo, playing in a lousy ballpark for a lousy team that looks like it has already quit.
Hopefully, Holliday gets traded to a contender in July. And I do think he’ll get a decent (but not great) free-agent offer after this season. But you couldn’t have blamed Holliday if he had tried to sneak on the Rockies’ team bus Sunday and pleaded, “Take me with you, please!”
• It’s not Street’s nasty slider that’s impressed me the most. Rather, it’s his demeanor. Off the field, he comes across as a friendly, engaging, ultra-talkative Boy Scout. But stick him on the mound and he becomes a chess- playing pit bull.
• Gonzalez is looking like the real deal, though I admit I was beginning to have my doubts whether he could hit big-league pitching. I was seeing a terrific fielder who looked capable of battering Triple-A pitching but was overmatched at the plate. But after watching him rake the A’s over the weekend, I’m jumping back on the CarGo bandwagon. He still has issues vs. lefties, but I predict he’ll finish the season hitting about .270.
• O’Dowd needs to find bullpen depth, and soon. If Manuel Corpas’ elbow injury turns out to be serious, the bridge to Street will be on the verge of collapse. It would be a shame for the Rockies’ season to crash because management sat on its hands.
• For all of you Tulo bashers, I’m here to say, “I told you so.” Troy Tulowitzki is proving that last year’s toil and trouble, not his great rookie year, was the aberration.
• Before the season started, I bet my colleagues the Rockies would win 78 games this season. I based my pessimism on the loss of Jeff Francis, and what I thought would be a lackluster starting rotation. It’s starting to look like I was way off. I still have concerns about Jason Hammel and Jorge De La Rosa for the long haul, but the Rockies have become legitimate playoff contenders.
Of course the Rockies are going to cool off, but consider this: Once they return from Los Angeles, 16 of their next 20 games are at Coors Field.
The summer game is relevant again in Colorado.
