King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NLCS preview: A stealth series way out west should be a dandy, with Diamondbacks pitching cooling off the red-hot Rockies bats.
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Oct. 11, 2007 | For all the talk of the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies, they finished tied for the most wins in the National League this year, the Diamondbacks winning the Western Division, the Rockies ending the year as the hottest team this side of the Hades Hornets.
They'll meet in the National League Championship Series beginning Thursday night in Phoenix, and we couldn't ask for a better matchup. Game 1 will be on TBS at 8:30 p.m. EDT.
The Rox and D-backs, both dating only to the 1990s, lack the angst-filled back-stories of the teams they defeated in the first round to get here, the Chicago (no World Series wins since ought-eight) Cubs and the Philadelphia (10,000 losses and counting, with a grand total of four pennants and one title over the last 105 years) Phillies.
But if you don't have to worry about filling air time on a pregame show, and it doesn't offend you to your very core that two teams west of the Central time zone will play each other for the pennant, the Rockies and Diamondbacks are the way to go. The over-under on a nationally prominent typist writing a "who cares about the Rockies and Diamondbacks?" column is Friday at noon.
EDT, of course.
You know the story of the Rockies, who won an astounding 13 of their last 14 games to tie San Diego for the wild card, then beat the Padres in a play-in game that would be on an endless loop on its own dedicated cable channel by now had it been contested by the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, then swept Philadelphia in three to gain the NLCS.
Before that streak started, the Rockies had gone 7-9, or, if you'd like to take a longer view, 15-16. They had been ambling along on their way to a fourth-place finish in the West. That would have been 10 straight years finishing either fourth or fifth in a five-team division. To say this club came out of nowhere in the last two weeks of the season is to vastly overstate the proximity of nowhere.
The story of the D-Backs is that they came into the season with a hot, sexy young team with up-and-coming studs like shortstop Stephen Drew and outfielders Chris Young and Carlos Quentin, plus ace pitcher Brandon Webb and returning former ace Randy Johnson. So a bunch of hipsters and poseurs picked them to win the West, but Johnson's back fell off, the young studs had disappointing years and the Diamondbacks got outscored by their opponents.
And won the West.
The Diamondbacks got another huge year from Webb, who at one point was sniffing at the heels of Orel Hershiser's record for consecutive shutout innings, plus a career year from well-traveled outfielder Eric Byrnes and big contributions from rookie pitcher Micah Owings and third baseman Mark Reynolds. Young and Drew had their moments, the bullpen was fantastic, and various non-stars like pitcher Doug Davis and second baseman Orlando Hudson -- who's out for the playoffs with an injury -- did solid jobs.