Relaxed Rockies get the edge

PHILADELPHIA -- Each team was introduced full-bore Wednesday afternoon at Citizens Bank Park, from the 25th man to the coaching staff, all lining up on the base lines in a formal setting. Each seat was full, each fan was equipped with a towel to wave, and a national television audience awaited as baseball’s postseason got underway.

Thus, the pressure was finally off the Colorado Rockies.

“I felt totally different,” Rockies first baseman Todd Helton said afterward. “I felt relaxed and confident.”

The first foray into the playoffs for almost all of the Rockies began with a 4-2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 1 of a National League division series that helped introduce this brash bunch -- absent from nearly everyone’s postseason prognostications three weeks ago -- to much of the nation. Colorado scored three runs off Phillies ace Cole Hamels in the second, received six strong innings from left-hander Jeff Francis, got a solo homer from most-valuable-player hopeful Matt Holliday and won for the 15th time in 16 games.

“The last couple weeks, if we lost a game, we were done,” right fielder Brad Hawpe said. “I guess you can say it’s a relief. . . . If we lost this game, we still were playing.”

In that relaxed atmosphere, Francis took the mound and dismissed his two miserable starts against the Phillies this season, outings in which he gave up 14 runs in 8 1/3 innings. He took the playoff excitement in this city -- which waited for 14 years for a return to the postseason -- and dismissed it immediately, striking out the first four men he faced.

The Phillies scored more runs than any team in the National League this year, an average of 5.5 a game. Yet through four innings against Francis, they managed only a walk and a single from Hamels, striking out seven times.

“That’s pitching,” the Phillies’ Aaron Rowand said. “That’s how [Greg] Maddux does it. That’s how [Tom] Glavine does it. He knows how to pitch. When he’s not leaving balls in the middle of the plate, he’s tough.”

Hamels, conversely, was coming off an eight-inning outing in which he shut out the Washington Nationals, a game the Phillies badly needed in their come-from-behind quest for the NL East title. But in the second inning, he looked badly out of sync. “He probably left some of his off-speed pitches over the plate,” third baseman Garrett Atkins said, “and we got ‘em.”

The first was crushed by Helton to left-center, and it caromed away from Rowand long enough for Helton to end up on third. Atkins followed with a double to left on a curveball, and Hamels was off on a 40-pitch odyssey. By the time he struck out Holliday to end the inning, he had given up three hits, three walks and three runs -- and the Phillies were in a 3-0 hole.

“Nothing can really prepare you for what this situation is like,” said Hamels, a 23-year-old in his second big league season.

The Phillies got back-to-back homers from Rowand and Pat Burrell to start the fifth, but they had only four hits overall and their first four hitters went 0 for 15.

“We had fun,” Holliday said.