2007 World Series Game 2

The Colorado Rockies came into this year's World Series winning 21 out of their last 22 games and swept both the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks. What does last night's drubbing at the hands of the Boston Red Sox mean for Colorado's psyche and can they bounce back for Game 2? I'll breakdown what went wrong and look into some of the reasons that could have been behind the Game 1 blowout.

First, let us examine the LAYOFF. Colorado breezed through their National League opponents and then sat and watched the Cleveland Indians take a commanding 3 games to 1 lead over the Red Sox. With Cleveland's top 2 pitchers, both Cy Young award candidates, coming around in the rotation, it seemed like the Indians would win one of the next 2 games. When the Red Sox pushed the series to the limit, the Colorado players must have begun to feel some pressure. Not only were they now sitting for a handful of days, but they knew they would be waiting nearly another whole week before playing again and instead of playing the Indians, a team like themselves with little playoff experience, now they were facing the vaunted Boston Red Sox. A battle-hardened team with much post-season experience. A team that is built to take on and compete with the best in baseball.

Now layoffs are funny things. Managers don't like to discuss how a layoff affects a team, but last night's game made it very obvious. A pitcher can be too strong after a long layoff and control is often the issue. They become a little wild, but mostly their location in the strike zone suffers, especially their fastball, which tends to stay up in the zone. A perfect example of how a long layoff hurts a pitcher... Chien Ming Wang of the Yankees. Game 1 in the series against the Indians, pitching with 8 days off, Wang couldn't get his sinker to sink enough and the Yank's ace was shelled. Last night, Jeff Francis was missing his spots and the hot-hitting Red Sox squad werel over him.