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Colorado Rockies
It's never easy to figure out just what the heck is going on with the Colorado Rockies. Really good or really bad? Can they be both? The confusion is understandable, of course. The answer is simple. It's Coors. The Field. Not the beer. In its seven seasons of existence, Coors Field has proven to be both a curse and a blessing to the Rockies. In 2001, it was home to A.) The best-hitting team in baseball (a .292 average) and, B.) The worst pitching staff in the National League (5.29 ERA). The two are not mutually exclusive. The combination of awesome hitting/awful pitching proved deadly last season for the Rockies as they skidded to a 73-89 record, coming to rest in the National League West basement, 19 games behind Arizona. It also brought up a regular offseason dilemma in Denver: If you're the Rockies, do you try to improve your pitching in a place where it may well be impossible to pitch all that well? Or do you keep pouring on the offense, hoping that your hitters can keep wailing away at home and hit a little away from Coors, too (Colorado hit .253 on the road last season)? You win, it is said, with pitching. So the Rockies have decided to do what they can there. Colorado still has Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle at the top of the rotation, though we're not sure that's exactly good news. Hampton was 14-13 last year with a Coors-inflated 5.41 ERA. The scary part was that he was 6-7 with a 5.10 ERA away from Denver. Neagle, too, was only so-so, going 9-8 with a 5.38 ERA. He was 3-6 with a hefty 5.11 ERA away from Coors. The Rockies are hoping for better seasons from those two, and then they're throwing everyone else who has an arm into the fray. John Thomson is in there, and young Shawn Chacon, and Scott Elarton and probably Pete Harnisch (signed from Cincinnati). Thomson, a 28-year-old right-hander, went 4-5 with a 4.04 ERA in 14 starts last season, impressive considering eight of his starts were in Coors. In his six non-Coors starts, he was 2-3 with a 3.20 ERA. Chacon is only 24, and he went 6-10 with a gulping 5.06 ERA in 2001. Still, with 13 starts in Coors, that's not that bad. Elarton … 4-10 in 24 starts with a 7.06 ERA. Hmmm. And Harnisch had a 6.37 ERA with the Reds last year. He never even pitched at Coors. The Rockies still have the great hitters, guys like right fielder Larry Walker (.350, 38 home runs, 123 RBIs) and first baseman Todd Helton (.336, 49, 146), though the nagging question there is how well they do outside of Coors Field. (For the record, Walker hit .293 and Helton .286 on the road, with 18 and 22 homers, respectively). They still have one of the best leadoff men in baseball, center fielder Juan Pierre, whose 46 stolen bases you have to figure are good at any altitude. But third baseman Jeff Cirillo is gone (.312, 83 RBIs), moved to Seattle for some arms. Former Met Todd Zeile takes his place. The hitters will hit. They always do. The question is, do the Rockies have enough pitching? The question is, in Coors Field, do they ever? Up for grabs: Here's a thankless job: Calling pitches from behind the plate at Coors Field. Ben Petrick will get the chance to become Colorado's starting catcher in spring training, but the team wonders about his defense -- plus he hit only .238 last season. The team signed veteran Tony Eusebio from Houston, but he'd be only a short-term fix, and veteran Gary Bennett is OK behind the plate but barely OK beside it (.273). Spring chicken: The Rockies dealt lefty Mike Myers to Arizona and got hot-hitting outfielder Jack Cust in the deal. Cust was a terror in Class AAA last season, hitting 27 homers -- and drawing 102 walks -- in 135 games. His defense is suspect, though. Still, in Coors Field and on the road, the Rockies can use all the offense they can get.
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