Rockies have lost late-season spark
DENVER – The starting pitchers are getting shelled, the brilliant bullpen is a bust. The timely hits are nowhere to be found, manager Clint Hurdle’s moves are coming up short.
Colorado’s collapse is almost complete.
After a month in which most everything went right for the charmed Rockies, most everything has gone wrong in the World Series.
The humidor?
No help in Saturday night’s 10-5 loss in Game 3 to Boston, which put the Rockies in a 3-0 hole.
“They are doing exactly what we did to teams,” Todd Helton said. “We grinded out runs, we didn’t give up outs easily and played great defense. That’s the Red Sox.”
LaTroy Hawkins figures it’s time to try something else.
“We’ve got to come out tomorrow and kick, claw, punch and do everything we can,” he said.
Nothing else has worked.
OK, so the slick fielding is still there, but it hardly mattered when the Red Sox were doubling down the lines and into the gaps all night.
Even with slumping leadoff hitter Willy Taveras on the bench, the key hits that carried the Rockies to playoff sweeps over Philadelphia and Arizona didn’t come too often at cavernous Coors Field.
And once again their starting pitcher, this time Josh Fogg, couldn’t find the strike zone or Yorvit Torrealba’s catcher’s mitt enough to keep Boston’s bats from bashing balls all over the place.
“We lived on the edge for 22 games and beat the odds for that stretch,” Kaz Matsui said through an interpreter. “Now things are catching up to us.”
To make history and become the first team to overcome a 3-0 deficit to win a World Series, the Rockies say they’re going to rely on a resiliency that helped them win an unfathomable 21 of 22 just to get here.
After all, this was a team that was down to its final strike on the last weekend of the season.
“We’ve had a good year as far as coming back and proving people wrong when we were down,” Brad Hawpe said.
“So we’re down right now, there’s only four games left for us to win. Are we going to do it?”
He answered himself.
“Yeah.”