This and that... Under the 'Rox...

Well, I will have to go ahead and admit that I vastly underestimated the Colorado Rockies.
When I saw the three games on the schedule for the Rockies at the end of June earlier in the season I picked this for an easy series win and perhaps even an easy series sweep.
But that's not how it's shaken out and right now we have already dropped the series and are on the verge of a sweep.
Not only that, but Colorado Rockies pitching has held the Yankees offense to just 1 run over 18 innings.
That's just not what I thought that I would be seeing here for these three interleague games this week.
Then I looked back at the calender and the schedule for the Rockies and saw a couple of interesting things.
Firstly, they played the Boston Red Sox for three games a few weeks ago and walked out of that series winning 2 out of 3 ballgames and outscored the Red Sox twenty runs to five in those three games.
Secondly, the Rockies actually have a better won/loss record than we do and they are only sitting 5 games out of first in their division and 4 games out of the NL Wild Card race.
The Rockies seem to actually have foundations of a good ball club out there in Colorado and if the Yankees offense doesn't get it's act together behind Roger Clemens tomorrow afternoon at Coors field we could be looking at a sweep.
And if that happened --- I would have to say, at least in the context of these last three days, that the Colorado Rockies were the better team between themselves and the New York Yankees.
And that they were the better team between themselves and the Boston Red Sox a few weeks ago.
And those games that they played against the Red Sox in interleague were in Fenway Park.
In any event, Tomorrow's day game will feature Roger Clemens --- who is coming off of two consecutive quality starts to begin his 2007 season facing former Baltimore Oriole Rodrigo Lopez who is coming off his fifth quality start of the season and his third victory of the season.
He has started 7 games this season and is 3-0 with a 2.90 ERA
In his starts at home, Lopez is 3-0 with a 3.29 ERA and his ball club is 6-1 in his seven starts so far this year.
This will be another tough test for Yankee hitters as they try to avoid a sweep in Denver before heading out to the Bay Area to take on Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants this weekend.
Good luck to the boys...
The way that they have been hitting, they're going to need it !

Mike



LETS GO YANKEES !!!

P.S.
Here's wishing a warm New York Yankees "Welcome back to Andy Phillips" !
Josh Phelps was called back up to the big league club last night after spending more than two months playing for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, the organization's Triple-A affiliate in Moosic, Pennsylvania.
Andy has been batting a cool .301 with 11 homers and 36 RBIs down on the farm and has spent most of his time there playing second base.
Andy has been playing well and it looks as if he has been able to put his assorted off-field issues, like his wife's battle with cancer and this spring's critical car accident involving his mother, Linda, behind him.
So please join me, my fellow Yankees fans as we sing this few bars to the tune of Welcome Back Kotter...
Welcome back....
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back....

P.P.S.
Congrats to Sammy Sosa tonight for clubbing his 600th home run at home in Arlington, Texas against his former team --- the visiting Chicago Cubs.
Somehow it seemed very appropriate that he was able to get his history making homer off of the Cubs and with the Ballpark in Arlington loaded to the gills with Chicago Cub fans.
Congrats to Slammin' Sammy...
Truly a remarkable accomplishment.
500 may not mean what it used to, but 600 is still a pretty big number for me.