Colorado Rockies: Welcoming back the offense to start the homestand

Welcome back to Coors Field, offense. It’s great to have you back home. The Colorado Rockies returned to Denver on Monday night and they brought along their bats, which had been missing in action in their previous nine-game road trip.

Monday night, the Colorado Rockies‘ offense finally showed up to the ballpark in their 10-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. It was a relief to see after they managed to score only 22 runs with 53 hits, and only one home run on the nine-game road trip to West Coast.

This was quite the contrast to the 74 runs and 127 hits the Rockies had produced in the 11 games in September before the 4-5 trip out west.

The 10 runs on 13 hits were highlighted by the huge five-run third inning but, more importantly, they drew eight walks in the contest, including four by Tony Wolters. Throw in the return of shortstop Trevor Story to the lineup, who had been out with an elbow injury since September 17. Story provided practically two identical shots into the left-center field gap for doubles to make the offense hum along.

"“I feel like we’re having real good at-bats as a team,” Story told Rox Pile and other reporters after the game. “It’s contagious. Sometimes I feel like we can do it with the homer, but it’s nice when we can hit doubles and big-time singles too.”"

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I would be remiss if I didn’t give credit to the pitching staff who has surrendered only four runs in during the Rockies’ current four-game winning streak … but it will be the Rockies’ offense that will decide whether or not they return to Rocktober.

After the scratch of Tyler Anderson from Monday’s start and having to move Jon Gray up a day, the Rockies will turn to Chad Bettis, who hasn’t started a game since August 12, on Tuesday. The Rockies can expect Bettis to go maybe four or five innings at most, meaning they will have to rely heavily on the bullpen. Another good night from the offense would make it much easier on the pitching staff as they will try to piece together nine solid innings.

The Rockies must have the offense clicking on all cylinders the final six games as they have closed the gap to only a half-game in the Wild Card chase with the Cardinals. The Rockies remain 1.5 games back of the Dodgers in the NL West.

Finally, and most importantly, the Rockies need the fans to pack Coors Field. Last night, only 30,336 were in attendance for the dismantling of the Phillies. That’s rather disappointing for a team in the middle of a playoff race. So get out to the ballpark, because you don’t want to miss out on some LoDo Magic in the coming days.