KRIEGER: Early prediction was overly modest

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, September 27, 2007

LOS ANGELES - They say you should always get out in front of negative publicity, so let me say this before somebody else does:

I was wrong.

I was too negative.

I did not appreciate the kid Rocks sufficiently.

Back on March 1, I wrote in this space that the Rocks would win 85 games this year. Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, they won No. 86. And they still have four to play.

In my defense, this is all uncharted territory. The Rocks are guaranteed the best record in their 15-year history. Their current 10-game winning streak is the longest in the big leagues this year. They are one game behind San Diego in the wild-card race and two behind Arizona for the National League West division flag.

"The average fan might not have seen this coming, but the average baseball person did," Ken Rosenthal wrote on FoxSports.com a couple of days ago.

Frankly, the average baseball person kept awful quiet about it. Back in March, I got a lot of mail calling my prediction idiotic, but not one correspondent called it too low. Or Tulo, for that matter.

Evidently, even my editors thought it laughable. The headline on that column was not, Rocks will win 85; count on it!

The headline was, This might come back to bite me.

It did, too, but perhaps not in the way they expected.

So I might have been too negative, but the rest of the town seemed to think I was a cockeyed optimist. And let me assure you, that's a first.

Only one person I know of made a public prediction that still has a chance to be right. That would be Rockies CEO Charlie Monfort, who picked his club to win the National League West. He and I wagered dinner on it, as we customarily do.

This is ironic because no one has been belittled publicly for his optimism more than Monfort. He was savaged for giving his management team contract extensions. He was disparaged for his statements of faith in the team.

And don't hold your breath waiting for the public apologies. Being a critic means never having to say you're sorry.

As for me, I'm willing to apologize if it means I don't have to pay for dinner. I just don't want to have to do both.

The Rocks are guaranteed to be within three of Arizona when the D-backs pull into town for a three-game season-ending series Friday night.

Meanwhile, all over the country, experts are waking up to the kid Rocks at a remarkable pace.

"The Rockies will be the NL team nobody wants to play if they make the playoffs because they can flat wear out starting pitchers and they've got some hard throwers with shutdown stuff on their pitching staff," Buster Olney of ESPN wrote.

This officially is the first time in history anyone has used "Rockies" and "shutdown stuff on their pitching staff" in the same sentence.

The Rocks jumped from 13th to seventh on the CBSSports.com power rankings this week. Suddenly, you can't turn around without tripping over a reference to Matt Holliday for MVP or Troy Tulowitzki for rookie of the year.

Wednesday night's game was evidence enough for the latter. Tulo added seven assists and three putouts for a major league-leading 809 total chances. His .986 fielding percentage now leads all big league shortstops.

With the Rocks protecting a 2-0 lead in the eighth, he went deep into the hole to backhand Dodgers shortstop Chin-Lung Hu's grounder, leaped and turned in one motion and fired a cannonball to Todd Helton to get him by a whisker.

Or not. The Dodgers argued and replays were inconclusive. But the play was so sensational, Hu should have been called out on the basis of brilliance.

Manager Clint Hurdle calls that Tulo move the Sammy Baugh jump pass.

The Rocks are having so much fun these days they truly couldn't care less what others say about them. Tell you what: If people keep jumping on the bandwagon at the current rate, they're going to need a bigger bandwagon.

"It doesn't matter what people outside the clubhouse think because we can't control that," Hurdle said after veteran Josh Fogg and three relievers combined on the 2-0 shutout. "What we can control is how we play."

And their play is reaching heights no Rockies team has ever reached, including the wild-card playoff team of 1995 that finished the strike-shortened season 10 games over .500 at 77-67.

If they manage to extend their 10-game errorless streak through the final four, they will finish with the best team fielding percentage in major league history.

"It has been a blast," Hurdle said. "It has been a long time since I've had this much fun in a baseball uniform."

And it ain't over yet.

I was wrong. On the bright side, so was everybody else.

kriegerd@RockyMountainNews.com