Holliday returns to Coors Field

Aaron Cook will be starting for the Colorado Rockies tonight, making his first appearance in over a month. But that isn't the biggest story of tonight's game.

No, the return of Matt Holliday is an even bigger story. I shouldn't have to recap how much Holliday meant to the Rockies during his five years with the club. Holliday hit 128 homers in a Rockies uniform, sixth on the franchise's all-time list (after the Blake Street Bombers and some guy named Helton), finished second in MVP voting in 2007, and was the key player on the Rockies' 2007 World Series team.

It will be a bit odd to see Holliday in Coors Field wearing a St. Louis Cardinals uniform, wearing number 15, but Holliday deserves a standing ovation from the crowd during his first at bat. While some may be bitter about the way the contract extension negotiations were handled -- those negotiations ultimately leading to a trade, as the Rockies realized they had almost no shot at retaining Holliday beyond 2009 -- I can't really blame Holliday for wanting to be paid in line with what his talent demands. Holliday's departure had more to do with the Rockies being unwilling to pay fair market value for him rather than any unreasonable demands that he was making.

I know that the questions are inevitable: as good as the Rockies have turned out to be this season, how good would they be if they still had Holliday? My honest answer is that I think the impact on the team's record would be negligible. At the time of the trade, I thought the Rockies were getting fair value for Holliday, and that view has been vindicated over the season. As good as Holliday is, Carlos Gonzalez has been pretty good this year. While the Rockies' offense would be better with Holliday in left field, and Gonzalez's superior defensive value doesn't make up for that loss, where would the Rockies be without Huston Street? The rest of the Rockies' bullpen has been pretty shaky; without Street around to nail things down in the ninth, the Rockies might have a couple more losses in there -- in fact, potentially the difference between making the playoffs and missing the playoffs. And beyond 2009, Carlos Gonzalez will be roaming the outfield at Coors for a few more years; the same can't be said for Holliday, who likely would have left as a free agent.

As for the game tonight -- Cook really needs to show something. For a few weeks following the All-Star break, up until he was injured in August, Cook just wasn't very good. That needs to change; the Rockies have gotten too many bad pitching performances over the last week to be able to weather another one from Cook.

Tracy needs to get back to what works

Why did the Rockies begin playing better once Clint Hurdle was fired and Jim Tracy took over? That's a difficult question to answer. Several Rockies started playing better after slumping for much of April and May, and that just happened to coincide with Tracy's elevation to manager. But one thing that Tracy did was to start using a consistent starting lineup.

Okay, Tracy didn't exactly send the same eight guys (plus pitcher) out there every single day. But he did start being more consistent with the team's daily lineups. Ian Stewart was allowed to stick at third base, rather than shifting between second and third. That meant that Clint Barmes was allowed to play every day. In the outfield, Tracy began playing Gonzalez, Fowler, and Hawpe most of the time, giving Spilborghs a few starts against lefties and giving Seth Smith the occasional start as well.

And now? While injuries have had something to do with it, Tracy's been shuffling his lineups around a lot over the last couple of weeks. Tracy is falling into the same trap that Hurdle was: we have four outfielders who should be starting, so let's try to give all of them some starts instead of just sticking with the same guys every day. On paper, it seems like a decent idea; after all, everybody gets some rest along the way, and we can bench or play guys based on who's hitting well. Yet paradoxically, it seems to have the opposite effect. If a guy knows that he might wind up on the bench after a bad game or two, he's going to press... and he's not going to play as well. And somewhat strangely, the one outfielder who seems to be the most entrenched, Brad Hawpe, is having an awful month.

Off-day fodder: Why isn't Dex playing?

It's not a cardinal rule of baseball. There's nothing that says that a player cannot lose his starting job because of an injury (aside, obviously, from the time when he's actually injured.) There are plenty of players in all sports who have gotten hurt, then come back only to find that another player had played so well in his absence that he's no longer a starter. (Tom Brady, anyone?)

With that said, it's difficult to understand the Rockies' logic behind benching Dexter Fowler since he returned from the disabled list. While Dex's playing time isn't at Omar Quintanilla levels, he's only made three starts in the month of September. I understand the desire to play the hot bats, especially in a playoff run, but it's hard to suggest that Fowler hasn't been hot. While he's hitting just .250 in September, he hit .361 -- with a .623 SLG -- in August. That September BA is based on just 16 official at bats, as well.

As if the logic needed more clouding, the bats the Rockies have been playing in place of Fowler aren't exactly tearing the cover off the ball. Seth Smith is hitting well right now, but Carlos Gonzalez has been so-so lately -- he's hitting .247 in September after, like Fowler, killing the ball in August. And Brad Hawpe is struggling. He's hitting a paltry .154 for the month. After an All-Star first half, Hawpe's clearly come down quite a lot since the break, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him traded during the offseason.

Which brings me back to Fowler. Carlos Gonzalez is young and has a ton of potential, but Smith is older than you might think (he'll be 27 later this month.) While he's had a good year, this is realistically about as good as we can expect him to be as he's already close to his peak. Hawpe is now 30, and players of his type -- power hitters with bad gloves and below-average speed -- fall off more quickly than you might think. It's very possible that Hawpe's second half is the start of a trend, not just a mere slump, and it's also possible that he won't be in a Rockies uniform next year. Dex oozes potential, and he needs to get playing time. So why not play him some more?