The San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies met Thursday night with the kind of stakes that come with the bottom of a division: both teams had 38 losses, and this series could decide who spends the All-Star Break in last place in the NL West.
That is why Rockies Vs Giants is drawing attention now. Carson Whisenhunt was set to make his second start of the season for the Giants, and the left-hander came in with something to build on after allowing two earned runs in five innings in his previous outing. On the other side, Ryan Feltner had been one of Colorado's steadier arms lately, carrying a 3.23 ERA and a 1.08 WHIP over his last seven starts.
The matchup matters because the numbers at the bottom are tight, even if the two clubs have taken different paths to get there. The Rockies held the No. 5 spot in the NL West only because they had lost two more games than the Giants, which turned a late-July meeting into a direct fight over the last seat in the division basement before the break.
That is where the contradiction sits. Colorado has been described as having a red-hot, very good offense, yet it is still one of the two 38-loss teams in the division. A lineup can heat up and still leave a club stuck in the standings if the pitching cannot keep pace, and Colorado's staff has been the side that has lagged. Feltner's recent stretch offered a better sign, but it has not erased the larger problem.
The Giants have their own pressure points. Jung Hoo Lee and Eric Haase were expected to come off the bench in the opener, while Lee was hitting under.175 over the past week. The club had also just stumbled through games on Tuesday and Wednesday that got away early, including a near no-hitter on Wednesday, which made Thursday's start more than a routine turn through the rotation.
Whisenhunt has a chance to change the tone of the series before it settles into the All-Star Break. If he can repeat the efficiency he showed in his first outing and hold down Colorado's offense, the Giants can keep from going into the break behind the Rockies. If not, the standings will sort themselves out in the simplest way possible: by who survives the final series first.
