Clint Hurdle still doesn't get it:

Brian Fuentes entered an 8-8 game and left with helium in his ERA, inflating from 2.56 to 3.94. For now, manager Clint Hurdle said he's inclined to stick with Fuentes as the closer if a save opportunity arises tonight, but everything is written in pencil these days.

Clint Hurdle does not want to think outside of the box. Brian Fuentes is the closer because he's the closer, but only because he's the closer. And because he's the closer, that must mean he's the best reliever to use in close or tie games. Really, does that make any sense? Because, you know, Fuentes clearly isn't the best reliever on the team. Taylor Buchholz must have been locked in a cage and the key thrown away.

More from that article:

"They are very well aware of where we are coming up short as a team," Hurdle said. "They need to continue to show up for one another, that's the challenge. And I've got to show up for them and help them."

Maybe not showing up for them will help them. Whatever that may or may not entail.

Patrick Saunders pretends he's Matt Holliday's thought processes, because we have this:

And Rockies management, which will have it's annual midseason state of the franchise review Wednesday, was left to ponder if there is any reason to wait until the All-Star break before actively shopping a handful of players, including Fuentes, Yorvit Torrealba, Willy Taveras, Matt Herges, and Matt Holliday or Garrett Atkins.

And as always, read Dave Krieger's latest column.

As anybody can tell, it's been just about a complete and total group effort for the team's abysmal failures thus far. The blame is too diffuse to do any good. You saw me on Saturday, I was too scrambled with the misery to keep a coherent train of thought. Everything looks bad, so we're just spinning our wheels here and any complaint will seem valid but ultimately futile. There are too many elephants to eat, regardless of how many bites we start off with. So what I propose instead is that we just narrow our focus and blame to one individual. We need a scapegoat.

via upload.wikimedia.org

Okay, I know a lot of you want Clint Hurdle's blood, a few wouldn't mind Dan O'Dowd or the Monforts, or players like Jorge de la Rosa or Yorvit Torrealba, but that's not how scapegoats work. It's got to be somebody who we can blame for all the team's failures so the guys who really are failing (everybody else) can feel better about themselves and then get back on track. In other words, it's got to be somebody relatively blameless for this season. Aaron Cook? What are you kidding? We can't give up our best guy. Jason Hirsh is relatively blameless, I mean he hasn't even played this season, but then the Rockies -who let's face it- have had some religious issues in the past, might not want to deal with the ramifications of blaming the Jewish guy. So Hirsh is definitely out.

Spilly? I probably ruined that possibility myself last year when I thought he was Jewish too, but it turns out he's just Belgian. Let's just not go there, because it's sort of embarrassing for me and besides, he's our second best player right now. Really, we need all the help we can get.

Okay, so by my count, that leaves us four candidates for a worthy scapegoat. All are young, pretty decent but not spectacularly enough where they're too valuable to exclude themselves from consideration for bearing the burden of the team's miserable play in 2008:

• Chris Iannetta
• Ian Stewart
• Seth Smith
• Taylor Buchholz
  

I'm going to put their names in a hat, and draw one out for the Official Purple Row Scapegoat of the Week. If anything goes wrong with the team, it's that guy's fault. Yorvit Torrealba GIDP's, you blame the scapegoat. Glendon Rusch gives up two three run bombs in the first inning, you blame the scapegoat.

Everybody clear on this? Good, I feel much better about the team already. I'll have the name of the OPRSW by tonight's game thread, so if there are any objections to the candidates, come up with them quick.

While I'm always happy with outcomes like yesterday, having one starter who can't lose and four who can't win doesn't help us in the long run. Trade for another? Maybe, but the quality and service time of the starter the Rockies would need certainly limits our available options on the trade front to just about zero. I think we've got to wait a little to make sure that we're really in a position to contend this season in the first place and also to see if other teams open up the availability of their young and talented pitchers. I certainly don't think it's in the club's best interest to trade for a pending free agent or give up prospects if we're still ten games back at the All-Star break.

Clint Barmes didn't start yesterday, but his productive bat has been a definite positive for the Rockies in the wake of Tulo's injury. Jack Etkin writes about what he's been doing to elevate his hitting skills .

Woody Paige learned a valuable lesson about baseball from the Rockies last season; that early May is not the time to panic. Still, the issues facing the Rox right now are a bit more complicated than they were at any point in 2007, and the start of the D-backs more daunting.

I speculated in the game thread that Chris Iannetta's opposite field sac fly with the bases loaded yesterday might have been more impressive
to Clint Hurdle than a walk in regards to his playing time , even though the latter saves the out and leaves the team in a better position to score more. I may have been right:

We are knocking on that door," Hurdle said. "Iannetta has done a good job with the at-bats he's had. He's been very productive."

Meanwhile, Taylor Buchholz figures to see more late inning work given his strong performance in 2008 to date.

Even though they weren't the first to use it, the Rockies are close to securing key trademarks for the term "Rocktober", which amounts to a nifty coup and adds a lot of value to the Rockies brand. Since better branding equals greater revenue, which equals greater chances for building championship teams, I'm actually as excited for this news as I am for our current three game win streak. Now let's get back to the playoffs so the team can cash in from this some more and re-sign Matt Holliday.

Speaking of playoffs, I'm also excited for Joe Sakic and the Avalanche, if anybody hasn't had the chance to check out our excellent bloggers at Mile High Hockey, I encourage you to take the opportunity right now. Woot. Corporate Thursday, see how I just built our SBN brand right there? Yeah, I'm all about selling out today apparently.

It looks like Jeff Baker will get another chance at starting at second today (weather permitting) and Taylor Buchholz is feeling fine in his relief role. Those are two of the several notes from the Denver Post this morning.

I know there's some disagreement here on the merits of Micah Bowie, as should normally be expected for the last guys in the bullpen on any team. I still think we made the right decision with him over Josh Newman this Spring, as Jack Etkin points out, he's stranded all seven baserunners he's inherited. Of course, thanks to his three run tenth inning outing against Arizona, he's drifted to the bottom of the pack in Rockies WXRL (it's as complicated as the acronym makes it sound, but it's as decent a way of measuring relievers as I've seen) so the debate must go on. It's still early, we'll see if his smoke and mirrors act remains as successful as it's been up to this point.

Woody Paige's editors left some stuff out of his column on Kip Wells this morning:

He began 2000 as the No. 2 starter for the White Sox... and had a 6.02 ERA that season.

He had back-to-back earned-run averages of 3.58 and 3.28 (and 22 victories) with the Pirates, but they gave up on Wells in 2006... after back to back to back ERA's of 4.55, 5.09, and 6.69 (and 30 losses) for Pittsburgh over the next three seasons.

He was shipped to Texas for a minor-leaguer... because no team was dumb enough to offer more than Jesse freakin' Chavez for Kip Wells. Then, it was on to St. Louis, which gave up on him.., after 17 losses and a 5.77 ERA, and now, Colorado... who would be wise to realize that over the last four seasons Wells' teams have gone 32-61 in his starts.

He earned the right to be in the Rockies' rotation a bunch of money. He earned respect, if not revenge one win. We need to see some more.

I don't want to take anything away from what was a very good start by Kip last night, and certainly I remain hopeful he proves worthy of his contract, but he did have very good starts early in the season for St. Louis last year before things went South quickly. Let's not put too much into the results of one game just yet.

The same wait-before-passing-judgment caveat should be said for Jayson Nix, but coaxing two walks from the eighth slot in the lineup was as an encouraging sign as Wells' performance. The eighth slot walk didn't happen frequently enough early last season for the Rockies-albeit Chris Iannetta and Jamey Carroll did a lot more of it later in the year- so it's nice to see the change. It's one of the little things that the Padres in particular have been very good at over the last few seasons: taking advantage of opponents' being too careful before the pitcher to flip the lineup. Nix saw a total of seventeen pitches in four plate appearances,  when compared to Willy Taveras -who saw just twelve in five PA's- he comes off looking particularly well.

Taveras was just miserable all around at the plate -the one notable home plate slip on a potential infield single inclusive- but I found his fifth inning fielder's choice out to shortstop particularly troubling as it followed an equally aggravating failed bunt attempt by Wells to move Jayson into scoring position after his first walk. Having to endure relying on small-ball tactics on nights like yesterday is bad enough, having to endure poorly executed small-ball is excruciating. Taveras and Brad Hawpe (who at least saw 24 pitches) were the only two in the lineup to fail to connect solidly on at least one occasion, everybody else either had solid hits or just missed moments, so I don't think we need to worry about the O tanking just yet.

At any rate, let's give lots of credit to our bullpen for the victory yesterday, Micah Bowie, Taylor Buchholz, Brian Fuentes and Manny Corpas  allowed just two singles (one of the weak infield variety) and a walk in three and two thirds innings. Conspicuously -and most thankfully- absent was Luis Vizcaino. I know the team signed him with the expectation that he would have been the one to call on in the seventh instead of Buchholz, so that Hurdle didn't allow a LaTroy Hawkins-esque Opening Day disaster come to pass is a credit to our manager's ability to learn his lessons. Speaking of learning high leverage lessons from last year, compare Bowie's appearance to the first time Jeremy Affeldt came into the game with runners on in a one run ballgame in 2007. As Tracy Ringolsby points out, the new faces in 2008 are so far looking alright. Let's hope that trend continues today.