Baseball tonight

Padres Streak

Thanks to the Padres, San Diego fans feel like they’re being taken on a rollercoaster this season. Win 9 out of the first 12, lose 19 of the next 23, and then a (barely) double digit game winning streak that ended in a 6-5 loss to Arizona, who barely held on as the Pads overcame a 6 run deficit to score five runs in the last two innings. The Pads begin a three game weekend series tonight in Denver. The pitching matchup is fairly even (though Young has had pretty good luck swinging as well) but we’ll see how the Rockies do coming off a sweep by the Dodgers. Their at-home record is just 7-12 so far this year lending to speculation there will be some changes in the payroll…

And those changes are… the Colorado Rockies fired manager Clint Hurdle today after 15 years with the team (7 as manager) and a 0.461 winning percentage. With a 14 game deficit in the NL West, even a website complete with t-shirts and a petition to get The Hurdle out of the way, there wasn’t much doubt some shaking up in the Rockies dugout was going to occur. Even Hurdle had acknowledged his position wasn’t exactly the most “stable” (pun intended…), often sounding more capable of managing tractor equipment and crops than a baseball team and even drawing an analogy of the Rox needing a win to a hog yearning for slop. His replacement will be tasked with putting together a team out of a few talented players and some slumping stars and the Monforts don’t seem capable of taking any responsibility in that either. Bench coach Jim Tracy will replace Hurdle until a replacement is hired.