Hooray for the return of the good Jeff Francis. Can you see him bolting for San Diego as soon as his free agency status allows it? Maybe they can bring back the old hitters' background for him and he can be even more dominant. As I will keep mentioning until they stop doing it, the Rockies offense walked less (4 to 5) and struck out more (9 to 5) than their Padres counterparts. Is it not obvious to anyone in the Colorado organization that at Coors and abroad, putting the ball in play and getting runners on base is a sound winning strategy? I don't know why I'm being so down while they're winning...maybe it was Joe Kennedy's easy win for Oakland today. Where was that all year in Denver, Joe?

There have been a lot of articles about the weakness of the NL West lately (here's the latest, from Yahoo! Sports), but very few of them mention the fact that absent their brutal April, the Rockies have actually been as good if not better than their divisional brethren. Lesson here for Colorado: get off the blocks a little stronger in '06.

Sunny Kim and Brian Lawrence tonight. Roll, you good times, roll.