The Angels and Red Sox will score a lot of runs, while the absence of a dominant starter for the White Sox could be the difference.
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For starters I have always hated the fact that Coors Field is such a launching pad (and much worse than that was Mile High Stadium before it) and as such is really no place for National League baseball. Nothing was worse than watching your team go into Denver for a series and get murdered by virtue of one long bomb after another.
For certain, the mid-1990s Rockies' teams of Dante Bichette-Andres Gallaraga-Vinny Castilla-Larry Walker were always dismissible because of their wildly inflated numbers. Bichette in particular was a mediocre journeyman prior to his arrival in Denver in 1993. Then, starting in 1995 when he got the swing of the thin air, he went on a five-year stretch of over 110 RBI per season. Kind of hard to swallow.
Of course, Larry Walker was the type of player who would have been good anywhere - he just happened to play his key years in Colorado. Like Walker, one man has stood above the thin air and the launching pad aura and has been, for ten years, a reliably solid hitting machine. Now in his first post-season, first baseman Todd Helton might finally get his chance to taste a World Series.
Surely, like his predecessors, Helton has benefited from the hitting-friendly confines of Coors. Nevertheless, Colorado has rarely been in contention since their 1995 early exit from the playoffs. In ten solid full seasons, all in Colorado, Helton has never hit below .300 and has rarely been unable to play. But his team has never made the playoffs - until now with their incredible late-season run.
Now 34, Helton's power numbers are way down from his 20s peak when he once hit 49 home runs (2001) and six times hit 30 or more. But his career batting average stands at .332, and he has 1087 career RBI since 1997, averaging over 100 per year. A pure lefty, Helton also walks a ton - 980 in his career. Though overshadowed by Barry Bonds' ability to draw bases-on-balls, Helton's career on-base percentage is .430, 10th all-time among all baseball players.
With the Rockies piling up the wins in September, they have earned their shot. It might be justified to see as reliable a player as in the game today as Helton finally get a crack at a title.
