Aaron Cook threw a 5-hit shutout that last time he pitched. This time he knew he had been selected for the All Star Game when he walked out to the mound.
How did he react?
By giving up 7 runs in 7 and a third innings and taking the loss to lower his record to a still-respectable 11-6 and raise his ERA from 3.38 to 3.66, still tops among Rockies starters.
Making it to the All Star game was a foregone conclusion anyway, so Cook couldn’t have been surprised. With Hurdle as the Coach of the Midsummer Night’s Classic, on the strength of making it to the World Series with the biggest fluke streak in the history of professional sports, it was obvious that he would take his best pitcher with him.
He would have taken others as well, if they all didn’t suck so badly.
Hurdle got to participate in the World Series and the All Star game in what is probably his last year as a Major League manager, and he should consider himself extremely lucky, and thank his lucky stars that there are totally incompetent owners like the Monfort “Meat Boys” to give him a job and stick with him for all these years of total failure.
Anyway, Cook started out well, with a scoreless first, then was touched for one run in the second and two in the third inning. Then he cruised through the 4th and 5th, then gave up a duece in the sixth, which cost him the lead at 5-4. He escaped the 7th, but gave up a two-run homerun with one out in the eighth and was consigned to the showers, now down 7-4.
The relief staff wasn’t much better, after Grilli escaped the eighth with no further damage, Viscaino gave up two runs and Bowers allowed another. What can you expect from hurlers with 9.24 and 14.73 ERAs?
So, the home team took three out of four from the Marlins, who have been a surprisingly good team in 2008 and are still a contender in the Eastern Division, only a couple back of the Phillies. The Rockies have a pretty good win streak going, but at 37 up and 52 down, they would already be close to elimination if the rest of the Western Division hadn’t been doing so poorly. As it is, they are only seven back and could still make a run if they can put together a 20-game win streak like they did last year.