Rockies Finally Are Road Scholars

The Colorado Rockies might have needed only six games to prove that it’s a new season, indeed.

Confronting the monkey they have carried since going 28-53 on the road last year, matching the Florida Marlins for baseball’s worst road record, the Rockies opened ominously with two losses at Cincinnati but then won four in a row against the Reds and Montreal Expos.

Reassured by a 4-2 trip, convinced they can win on the road, the hit-happy Rockies then returned to the friendly altitude

and sellouts of Coors Field, where they have continued an offensive onslaught that provides a sharp contrast to the offensive struggle of the National League West rival Dodgers.

How important was it to win on that first trip, to put 1996 behind them?

“Extremely important,” General Manager Bob Gebhard said. “I mean, I’d been asked about our road record 5,000 times over the winter. So much had been made about it in the local and national media that Don [Baylor, the manager] didn’t have to make a big thing about it because it was already the only thing on the players’ minds.

“Everyone knew that if we’d even played .500 on the road last year, we’d have been much better than a third-place team.

“Then we lost our first two games and everyone is thinking, ‘Here we go again,’ so to come back and win four in a row and put the myth to rest was very important.

“The other part of it is that we’ve been through the rotation once now and it’s been excellent. People had made as much about our rotation as they had the road record, but to this point I’m very pleased.”

The trend is promising, but the Rockies have 154 more games, including 75 on the road. It may be too early to say the “myth” is buried.

Last year, in going 83-79 overall and finishing eight games behind the San Diego Padres in the West, their road struggle was inexplicable.

A team that batted .343 and averaged 8.1 runs a game at Coors Field, the Rockies batted .228 and averaged 3.8 runs on the road, going 7-25 against San Francisco, Florida, Houston, New York and Philadelphia, the teams with the league’s worst records.

The Rockies led the National League with 221 home runs and became only the second team in history to have three players with 40 or more--Andres Galarraga, Vinny Castilla and Ellis Burks--but it wasn’t as if Baylor sat and waited for a three-run homer on the road. The Rockies were second in the league in sacrifice bunts, led in stolen bases with 201 and became the first major league team to surpass 200 in both home runs and stolen bases.

“It’s difficult to understand,” Gebhard said of the disparity between home (55-26) and road records, probably costing the Rockies a division title.

“Clearly, Coors Field is a great park to hit in, we get the last at-bat, and those 50,000 people every night tend to take the players to another level. The road is another world, but at the same time we have too much talent not to do better than we did last year.

“The only thing I can say is that it just kind of mushroomed, and the guys began to put too much pressure on themselves. Instead of taking a fundamental approach that wins games, like moving runners up, hitting behind the runner, they kept trying to hit the ball out of the park. I have no other explanation.”

There is another, though. The Rockies pitched poorly no matter where they were, giving up almost 5.6 runs a game, the league’s worst earned-run average.

Trade overtures failed, and Gebhard was unable to attract a significant free-agent pitcher to Coors Field, underscoring what he has believed since the Rockies first participated in the amateur draft, in 1992.

“It’s tougher to pitch here, and you have to have the right frame of mind,” he said. “Our goal is to draft, sign and develop our own pitchers.”

It’s a breathtaking process. The club’s pitchers prepare at triple-A Colorado Springs, which is about 800 feet higher than mile-high Denver.

Jamey Wright, Mark Thompson and Roger Bailey have taken some beatings along the way, but their early performances as part of a rotation that includes 17-game winner Kevin Ritz and veteran Bill Swift, returning after two years of injuries, has the Rockies optimistic and Gebhard saying of the three younger pitchers, “With experience and maturity, they’re only going to get better.”

In the meantime, the Rockies are still pounding the ball. Coming off the 4-2 trip, they returned to Coors Field and hammered the Reds, 13-2 and 13-4, collecting 19 hits in each game, stretching a winning streak to six games, during which starting pitchers were credited with every victory.

At 7-2 after Saturday’s 12-8 victory over the Expos, the Rockies have scored 78 runs, an average of 8.7. The Dodgers are averaging only 3.5 runs, but they have a 7-3 record, having done it with pitching.

Gebhard said he was confident the Rockies would continue winning on the road and would compete for a division title.

“We can swing the bats with anybody, and if our pitching steps up, as I think it will, we should be in the race all the way,” he said.

“We won 83 games last year despite that road record, and we played the entire year with our No. 1 pitcher [Swift] getting in only 18 innings and our cleanup hitter [outfielder Larry Walker] getting in only half the games.”

Walker suffered a broken left collarbone in June and a separated right shoulder in October, but is fully recovered. He hit three homers in a game in Montreal, and is batting .472 with seven homers.

The Rockies return to the road Tuesday for two games in Chicago, then go home for five with pitching-rich Atlanta and Florida, a telling test.

Then again, the Rockies might have passed their test during the first week of the new season.