Turnaround?

Well, here on the front range folks are smiling after the three game sweep the Rockies laid on the Padres this weekend in San Diego which was completed with a 10-4 win today. That performance is especially good news after last season when the Rox lost their first six road games on their way to a 7-36 start away from Coors Field.

Fellow BP writer Paul Swydan also reports that in sweeping the Padres the Rockies set a record for runs scored by a visiting team in PETCO park with 32 (10, 12, 10 in the three games). They also became the first team to score 10 or more runs in three consecutive games at PETCO.

Corey Sullivan also hit two triples in one inning today (one courtesy of Termell Sledge), the first time that's happened since 1951.

But among all the good news and prolific scoring I still believe that in the long run this team will have difficulty scoring runs. In both Saturday's and Sunday's game the Rox put up 7 run innings where they did most of their damage. On Friday night they had a 4 runs and 3 run inning. That's lots of crooked numbers but scoring them in such large bunches may be more indicative of good fortune than a sustained offensive attack.

More importantly though, if you look more closely at their offensive statistics you see a team that has scored 42 runs in five games which is very good but has drawn just 21 walks and struck out a league leading 59 times. Now I'm certainly not one to argue that strikeouts take alot away from your offensive output, but a strikeout to walk ratio so poor shows that the Rockies have lots of free swingers who show little plate discipline. Of those 21 walks nearly half (9) are from Todd Helton and 5 of them are intentional (4 to Helton). That's a lotta swingin.