Rockies rise again as Diamondbacks dip

As the Colorado Rockies celebrated their wild card-clinching victory Thursday afternoon, the Arizona Diamondbacks spent a few hours doing something that’s all too familiar: not hitting. Granted, they were facing Tim Lincecum(notes) in his final start of the season, but the dichotomy was stark nonetheless.

Champagne celebrations drenched the Diamondbacks’ crystal ball two years ago, when Arizona and Colorado were the best young teams in baseball and dueled for the National League pennant. The Rockies won. The Diamondbacks didn’t fret. They had talent out the yin-yang and a farm system that pumped out players like a sprocket factory. Another World Series beckoned.

“I figured it would be us and them for years,” Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki(notes) said.

So to see the two so diverge despite traversing similar paths – underachieving 2008 seasons followed by quick managerial firings early in 2009 – was a reminder that as much as the two teams mirrored one another in ’07, it takes evolution, growth and savvy to avoid the pratfalls that ensnared the Diamondbacks.

How the Rockies avoided that minefield is a testament to their management, on the field and off, and their willingness to take risks. Which runs atypical to their reputation, seeing as the manager of that World Series team, Clint Hurdle, was the first ever retained following five losing seasons to start his tenure. It took an 18-28 start this year for general manager Dan O’Dowd to give Hurdle the boot. And considering the Rockies already traded slugger Matt Holliday(notes) in the offseason, lost No. 1 starter Jeff Francis(notes) in the spring to shoulder surgery and watched Hurdle take a laser sight to the ego of Tulowitzki, their franchise shortstop, by benching him in April and May, the season might as well have been lost.

Especially with the hiring of Jim Tracy. In his seven-year managerial career with the Dodgers and Pirates, he was 562-572. His homey and nurturing style won him more friends than games. What makes him George Martin to the Rockies’ Beatles no one can explain with certainty. They just look at the record since Hurdle’s ouster – 73-40, 6½ games better than any National League team – and say they’re glad it happened.

“You get off to a slow start, a manager gets fired, and it’s very easy to lose where you’re going,” Tulowitzki said. “I knew we had some good players, because I was on that ’07 team, and I thought we were right there with that team, if not better. So I still believed.”

Nineteen players (including Francis and the injured pitcher Taylor Buchholz(notes)) remain from the 2007 Rockies, a team that at the end of that season won 21 of 22, and they’ve still managed to accent their core with rebuilding projects that panned out. The Rockies have the least top-end talent of the four NL playoff teams, one scout for an NL West team said, and yet they could be the most dangerous because they’re the deepest.

In the outfielder, they rotate among five regulars – All-Star Brad Hawpe(notes), the powerful Seth Smith(notes), speedy rookie Dexter Fowler(notes), occasional sparkplug Ryan Spilborghs(notes) and this year’s breakout, Carlos Gonzalez(notes), acquired from Oakland in the Holliday deal. The versatility of Clint Barmes(notes), Ian Stewart(notes) and Garrett Atkins(notes) allows Tracy to futz with his lineup daily. The Rockies remade their rotation with star-in-the-making Ubaldo Jimenez(notes) at the top, followed by three more trade steals, Jorge de la Rosa(notes), Jason Marquis(notes) and Jason Hammel(notes). Their bullpen, a mess early in the season, jettisoned the dregs, found stability with converted starter Franklin Morales(notes) and close Huston Street(notes), also nabbed in the Holliday trade.

O’Dowd saw weaknesses, adapted, maneuvered, got lucky – who really thought Tracy was the long-term solution? – and Rocktober is back.

Chase Field, meanwhile, hosted its final game of the season last week. It drew about 30,000 people, who saw five familiar faces atop the Diamondbacks’ lineup: Chris Young, Stephen Drew(notes), Justin Upton(notes), Miguel Montero(notes) and Mark Reynolds(notes). Each remains from the 2007 team and were collectively why Arizona, not Colorado, seemed in the best position for a dynasty.

Last year, they looked poised to do so. Arizona started 20-8 and held a 5½-game lead at the end of April. By the All-Star break, the Diamondbacks had lost 40 of 67 and saw their lead whittled to one. It soon evaporated altogether, and they finished the year two games over .500 despite in the offseason adding Dan Haren(notes), among baseball’s best pitchers.

He remains, and Upton is a star who could well win an MVP one day, and Reynolds will get votes for this year’s award (his 44 home runs are second in the league), and Montero is in the midst of an excellent season. So what happened to the Diamondbacks, then, that not only got manager Bob Melvin fired but turned into a 68-91 team six games worse than a San Diego bunch dismantled by budget-slashing owners?

The Diamondbacks’ bullpen has been bad – though not much worse than the Rockies’. Their starters’ ERA ranks 11th in baseball even without ace Brandon Webb(notes) for almost the whole season. Their manager, A.J. Hinch, was plucked from the Diamondbacks’ management team and handed a four-year contract without having ever helmed a game. GM Josh Byrnes was lambasted locally. By hiring Hinch in early May, he essentially said: We are playing for next season.

Over nearly five months, the judgments Hinch made from afar have met a cruel reality, enforced the afternoon in late September when Colorado stormed back against Haren: That no matter how good his players are individually, they stink together.

“The difference between the two clubs was evident: They just outexecuted us,” Hinch said. “When they had our ace on the ropes, they singled him and first-to-thirded him into runs. They executed a suicide squeeze. Relievers came in and got outs. They won games. We’re in very similar spots. You have one team that’s executing routinely and winning.

“To manage at-bats and manage situations and understand key moments of the game should be learned by now.”

And there is the answer, or the simple one at least: The Diamondbacks’ core hasn’t grown as expected. Drew is a Drew: replete with talent – the unfair sort given to the potentially great – that never manifests itself. And Young is an enigma. Given a five-year, $28 million contract last April, he imploded last year and followed by combusting this year. Back in Triple-A by August, Young simply got no better.

“The 2007 team played with real hunger and determination,” Byrnes said. “And as we feared, once you get on top and the fans and opponents and media expect you to be a playoff team, it’s a different dynamic. We haven’t responded well to that.

“The least of our problems is getting performance out of our young position players. The issue is separating an individual performance from one that helps a team win. Better defense. Better situational hitting. They don’t have that.”

Dividing and conquering such problems keep Byrnes and Hinch up late. They discuss how best to allocate resources, who needs the most instruction, what might work with an individual. They scheme and plot and try, and this year, at least, nothing worked. So they traded Jon Garland(notes), Tony Pena(notes), Jon Rauch(notes) and Felipe Lopez(notes) to restock a minor-league system that was more barren than the organization realized, and thus: 23 games under.

The Rockies are 23 games over, rolling into Los Angeles and trying to sweep their way into an NL West title and home-field advantage in at least the first round. They’re setting up their rotation to start Jimenez in Game 1 and otherwise trying to enjoy the fairy-dust feeling that surrounds a team that knows it’s playing next week.

No one minds that the remarkable catch Barmes made against St. Louis on Sunday wasn’t really a catch, nor that Jason Giambi(notes), another scrap-heap pickup, totes around his lucky golden thong and insists that the hero of the day wears it. (Some do. Sheepishly.)

It doesn’t matter because the Rockies are the survivors from the 2007 NLCS and the hottest team in the league. Which made it so odd that on the day Colorado overwhelmed Haren, some surprise permeated Tracy’s voice.

“We beat a star in this league today,” he said, and he should know better. These are the Rockies, in the mold of their previous incarnation, and they can beat anyone.