I recall when the NL expanded in 1993 and created the Rockies and Marlins. It had been announced a couple of years before, and the idea intrigued me so much that my dad actually hunted down a Rockies' T-shirt for me in about 1991. The thing was pretty much worn out before the team played its first game. I guess the thing that captured my imagination was that there hadn't been any expansion since the '70s (the longest MLB had gone without expanding since they started expanding in the '60s), and that was before I was paying much attention to baseball.

(I also remember the FAN radio station broadcasting the expansion draft for the Rockies and Marlins. Dan Shulman was one of the guys doing commentary, and when Colorado drafted Kevin Reimer, Shulman said something like, “I don’t understand this at all. This is a National League team, and Reimer couldn’t catch the ball if you handed it to him.”)

Then I got over it.

The Rockies just hadn't done much that was very interesting, coming into last year. They had their inflated hitting and pitching stats, due to their high-altitude city, with all that implies, and they won the wild card in '94. But '94 was the only year they were more than a couple of games ahead of .500. Even last year, the Rockies were hanging around .500 until late August, when they put on the jets a bit... and then took off altogether, winning 21 of their next 22 games, a streak that took them right into the World Series. Imagine being a Rockies fan during all that, and seeing a pennant materialize pretty much out of nowhere!

Anyway, the obvious question is, are they a very good team who clustered their success at the end of the year, or are they a half-decent team who went on a hot streak?

I checked their Pythagorean numbers, and found that there’s really not much there to flag. They actually won a couple of games less than their Pythagorean projection suggests, and when that’s broken down into home and road numbers, it’s still pretty close on both sides. The big long winning streak in September didn’t feature an inordinate number of close games. That 21-1 stretch may have been a fluke, but it was a straightforward fluke.

Strengths

The ’07 Rockies had a really outstanding bullpen, with six guys putting up ERAs under 4.00 in significant innings. That won’t happen again, of course; bullpens are rarely that stable over consecutive years, and less so when three of your top guys (Hawkins, Julio and Affeldt) leave as free agents. But they’ve still got Fuentes and Corpas, and they picked up Vizcaino, and they have other guys, so they’ll probably be okay. (I’m particularly intrigued by this guy Corpas. Those are some good numbers.)

I’m not sure whether to call the team’s offense a strength. It’s not a weakness, that’s for sure. Colorado was second in the league in runs scored with 860, which breaks down to 478 home (1st) and 382 away (5th). Well, even if you ignore the home numbers because of Coors Field, fifth is pretty good. Still, the team’s overall OPS+ was 103, which is just a bit better than average. So they’re all right but not spectacular.

Last year’s offense was, with one exception, stereotypical: power on the corners, strength up the middle. The best hitters were Holliday, Helton, Hawpe and Atkins (LF, 1B, RF and 3B, respectively); the defense-oriented positions all had below-average hitters (Torrealba and Matsui are nothing special; Taveras in centre gets on base all right but lacks power), except for Tulowitzki, a good hitter for a shortstop and young enough to improve. Matsui has moved on, and could be replaced by any one of a bunch of guys who won’t do much to change this outlook.

The starting pitching is similar to the offense—pretty good but not very very good. Solid. No, actually, it was quite a strength for them last year, in that a) they were ninth in the league in starters’ ERA despite playing half their games in Coors Field, and b) almost everybody who started games for them had at least an average ERA+ (okay, Josh Fogg (10-9 in 29 starts) had an ERA+ of 97, but he’s gone anyway). Of those, Jeff Francis was the best. He had quite a good season but wasn’t a Cy Young contender.

It’s a pretty young team, too. That’s a good thing.

Weaknesses

Rockies’ pitchers don’t seem to strike out a lot of guys—they were only 14th in the league in Ks last year. I imagine this reflects some kind of organizational attempt to cope with Coors Field, but I don’t know if you can keep that working in the long term. They do seem to be keeping the home runs and walks down, though, and as far as I can tell they did get more ground balls. So maybe they know what they’re doing. But I’d still like to see some more strikeouts.

One thing that did happen to the Colorado hitters last year was that they lost a lot of their power on the road. They still got on base respectably, but their road slugging percentage was third worst in the league.

The Rockies didn’t have much of a bench last year. They had Spilborghs as an extra outfielder, and he was fine, but that’s about it.

And they didn’t make many changes. It’s one of the things my dad taught me about baseball: You don’t change, you don’t win. A team that stands pat is only hurting itself; there’s always something you can improve. What changes did they make? Mostly spare parts: Vizcaino to replenish the bullpen, Kip Wells to carry the torch from Josh Fogg, Podsednik, Towers, Chris George… Somebody from that group might really help out, but I’m sure not going to predict it.

I haven’t heard a lot about any good young prospects who are going to surge up from the minors and play a role. Well, okay, one: Jayson Nix is in the mix to win the second base job. Other than that, the Rockies are mostly hoping for improvement from young players already on the team, like Tulowitzki, Francis, Ubaldo Jiminez (starting pitcher), Franklin Morales (lefty starting pitcher) and Ian Stewart (outfielder).

Outlook

There’s a lot to like about this team. I don’t think they’re world-beaters, but they’ve got an engine that runs. Given reasonable luck when it comes to injuries and young players, I don’t see why they couldn’t approach 90 wins, and that might be enough to make it to the postseson again.