Rockies camp tour: Back to basics in reality check

Rockies: Five things | 1 Man vs. 1 Fan | Street

TEMPE, Ariz. -- The cheers have faded. The newspapers have yellowed.

Holliday's on ice in Colorado.

Blink your eyes, and a moment is gone.

"Especially for me," says shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who last summer discovered that the launching pad that was 2007, and especially that postseason, didn't come equipped with a booster for 2008. "I go to the World Series my rookie year, not long after that I sign a contract shortly after some other guys sign. I think I'm going to be with friends for a long time."

Tulowitzki pauses. The encore, or what passed for one, still stings. Talk about being humbled. And the trade of slugger Matt Holliday to Oakland last November was almost as rough.

Now here come the Rockies again, doing what the franchise has practically trademarked: re-shaping itself after another clunker.

"To see Holliday leave really hurt," Tulowitzki continues. "We were really good friends. He's part of the reason I signed my deal. I'm going to miss him a lot."

Blink your eyes, and a moment is gone.

Instead of corralling the momentum from the first World Series appearance in franchise history in '07, the Rockies let the moment slip through their grasp.

Instead of watching Tulowitzki move to the next level, the Rockies watched him lose his way.

The decline of the Rockies surely wasn't all Tulowitzki's fault. Slugger Todd Helton's back went out, ballyhooed young starters were inconsistent (Ubaldo Jimenez) or disappeared (Franklin Morales), departed second baseman Kaz Matsui was not easily replaced.

But Tulowitzki's misery pretty much mirrored that of the franchise: early struggles, physical pain and finally utter frustration.

He started by going 16-for-105 (.152) at the plate. Then he tore a tendon in his left quadriceps while fielding a ground ball, icing him for the next 46 games. Then he landed on the disabled list a second time when he lacerated his hand. How did he do that? He angrily slammed a bat into the ground in early July after another lost at-bat, that's how he did it.

Ouch.

"This game is a humbling game," Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd says. "I think Troy will get more benefit out of that year over the course of his career than anything else. And it will make him a better player."

Tulowitzki, still just 24, agrees.

"Last year was so huge for me in my growing process," he says. "I learned a lot on the baseball field, and I learned a lot off of it. It's helped me become a better person.

"I'm lucky to be out here every day. I used to take every bad game home with me. I still have that fire in me, but it's different now."

Different, now, for the entire organization.

There will be no early season National League champion ring ceremony. Instead, there will only be hoping: That Seth Smith, the Rockies' second-round pick in 2004, can be a long-term solution in place of Holliday in left field. That Aaron Cook can pitch well enough atop the rotation to camouflage the year-long absence of Jeff Francis (left shoulder surgery). That Huston Street or Manny Corpas can ease the pain of losing closer Brian Fuentes to free agency.

Things went backward so quickly last season that O'Dowd and manager Clint Hurdle each are entering the final year of his contract. Ownership has been especially patient over the years, so it probably isn't as if the two need another World Series appearance to keep their jobs.

But guiding a club that has compiled a losing record in seven of the past eight seasons, yes, there is urgency to improve.

"It's not a factor for either of us," O'Dowd says of his and Hurdle's potential lame-duck status. "We have an organization built on trust. He knows what he has to do as a leader. I know what I have to do as a leader. A handshake from the owner is good enough.

"I'd love to get to the point where we're all year-to-year with a handshake understanding of what we need to accomplish."

As for Hurdle, he has implemented a whole new program focusing on attention to detail. Rockies starting pitchers early this spring, for example, were required to throw a first-pitch fastball away to all hitters. If the pitch was a strike, then the orders were that the next two pitches were to be inside fastballs.

Hitters, meanwhile, were banned from swinging at the first pitch through March 2. The point? "To try to get a sharper focus on what we need to do," Hurdle says.

"We got away from doing some basic things, some principles and standards that made '07 really special," O'Dowd says. "What that basically is is that team comes before self in everything we do."

O'Dowd and Hurdle each thought Rockies pitchers did not attack as aggressively last season, that they didn't throw enough strikes. The club's situational hitting often was abysmal, and their .343 team on-base percentage ranked 12th in the NL.

"Some of our better players tried to do too much," O'Dowd says. "They tried to take their '07 years and make them better in '08. That's usually a recipe for disaster."

"What we found out last year is that we didn't handle success as professionally as we should have," Hurdle says. "We just figured well, we'll get hot again."

Instead, the skipper says, they spent the winter changing lanes.

"And when you're changing lanes, it's just something to do," he says. "You don't accomplish a lot."

"I'm the first one to say I'm guilty of that myself," says Tulowitzki, who is entering the second season of the six-year, $31 million deal he signed a year ago January. "Not from the team aspect because I always put the team ahead of myself. But of trying to do too much. I tried to put my '07 numbers up in the first month. And that's not going to happen."

Blink your eyes, and the moment is gone.

Standing somewhere between the sharp learning curve and what should be a very bright rest of his career, Tulowitzki shakes his head.

"I'm so competitive, and I let it get to me. It became so obvious."

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