Jock Itch Wait, the Rockies don't suck?

Two weeks ago, I claimed that no one knew Rockies manager Clint Hurdle was fired due to the Nuggets's amazing run. It was a small blip on any Denver sports fan’s radar because the Rockies were flagging as usual, and there were other stories to run. Two weeks later, the Rockies are the hottest team in baseball: Tying a franchise record win streak at 11 and playing lights out baseball eerily reminiscent of their magical World Series run of 2007.

Too bad it’s only June. If this were happening in September, the Rockies bandwagon would be like the Beverly Hillbillies truck: stacked high and teetering with fair-weather fans instead of furniture and food. Now, there are just confused Coloradans muttering, “Wait a minute, I thought they sucked?”

The Rockies are still one game under .500 and a sizable 10-and-a-half games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for first place in the National League West. An 11-game winning streak is nothing to sneeze at, but when it only gets them out of the sewer and into the gutter of one of the weakest divisions in baseball, there’s still a journey ahead.

But there are some positives we can take away from this Rockies hot streak. Manager Jim Tracy, who took over for deposed Hurdle, seems to have gotten through to these guys. By all accounts, he’s not saying anything different than Hurdle, but sometimes you just need to hear it from someone else.

And because they started to listen, the Rockies have become a pretty good ball club. You don’t win 11 games in a row if you suck. They have three or four pitchers who are playing at a high level, and that’s something I don’t think any of us have uttered before. The bats are smoking, too. Everyone from Todd Helton to newcomer Carlos Gonzalez are getting hits, generating runs, and giving those aforementioned pitchers a little support when they get into trouble.

Did I mention that it’s still June? There’s a whole summer to go through for the Rockies and plenty of time for the Dodgers to slip further out of view. Let’s chat again when the Rockies are close enough to see L.A.’s license plate.

The Rockies go for win number 12 today when fellow World Series loser the Tampa Bay Rays come to town for a three-game, inter-league match-up. Tampa Bay, a good team with a better record than the Rockies (even though it has the misfortune to share the same division with the Yankees and Red Sox), may just be the yardstick that a rejuvenated home team can use to measure itself. If they push this streak to 14 or 15 games, the Rockies can safely book passage for another trip to the World Series.

All right, probably not.

But if you’ve suffered through countless summers of mediocrity with the Rockies, a long winning streak like this is like a tall, cool glass of lemonade on a hot June day.