If you follow a bad baseball team long enough, you can start filling in the box scores just from hearing the finals...when Colorado loses a medium-scoring game to Jeff Fassero, you know there were lots of runners left on base (12), lots of strikeouts (nine), and the starter was probably decent but not quite good enough (Jeff Francis gave up six hits in six innings, but four of them were solo home runs). As I have been paying close attention to lately, the Rockies' offense did outwalk the Giants' 4-2, but I have it on good authority that the Giants' lineup is all brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop every night.

Good game for J.D. Closser anyway (a single, a walk, and a double). Hurdle hit Todd Helton second, which is sort of novel. Cory Sullivan is still hitting leadoff and did have two hits yesterday. Matt Holliday had another multi-hit game. I suppose the big news is that Clint Hurdle and his staff will be back next year. Well, if you're not willing to pay top dollar for playing talent, I suppose there's no point in shelling out the big bucks for decent coaching. Also, retaining Hurdle give the Rockies a readymade excuse for not competing next season. Then when they're in fifth place at the halfway mark in 2007, they can fire Dan O'Dowd. I am getting how this works.