Rock Solid Recrap: It was bound to happen

A loss.

A big, fat, stinky, smelly loss. To the Cubs. At home. That's almost as rare as the Rockies winning in New York. But hey, that's baseball.

Anyways, that loss is the Rockies first in the last eight days. The Mets could lose their sixth game in about 96 hours on Sunday. I'd say things are still going pretty well here.

Cubs 8, Rockies 3 (boxscore) 

-- 0-for-12 with RISP. That speaks for itself doesn't it?

The 5th inning was without question the most frustrating of the blown scoring chances. Fowler leads off with a double, moves to third on an error by Casey Coleman. Jonathan Herrera followed that up by swinging at a 2-0 pitch and tapping back to the mound. Definitely not Herrera's best at-bat or best approach. Especially with Coleman's iffy command. Herrera could have stretched that out and drawn a walk.

After Giambi was plunked on the first pitch, Troy Tulowitzki stepped in and took three straight out of the zone. Okay, so Coleman has missed on six out of seven pitches and thrown wildly on a pickoff attempt. He's possibly rattled or just proving to be a less than solid starting pitching option at this point.

Then came the moment that confirmed this wasn't the Rockies night. Tulowitzki offered at the 3-0 pitch and fouled out to first.

Rally dead on arrival.

-- Jason Hammel wasn't very sharp tonight, but again, he left the game only down 3-1. It wasn't pretty at any point, but he didn't kill the team in any way either. And the good news is he's going to get better as we go along. I have little doubt of that, and I'm sure it'll come at a time when the team needs it most.

-- Felipe Paulino hasn't been right since the groin injury in Pittsburgh. Tonight he was just plain wrong. Makes me wonder if the groin is still an issue and if a DL stint might in the works for him. Pure speculation. But justified speculation in my mind.

-- Chris Iannetta is still raking. For the second night in a row he provided the only real offensive highlight.

Watch Iannetta go yard

-- Troy Tulowitzki is baseball's best shortstop. How long before Chicago's Starlin Castro becomes his biggest challenger? In all honesty, I'm not so sure he isn't already. Helluva talent.

-- No sense dwelling any more on this one. Still a chance to win a series tomorrow, but it won't be easy with the unknown Alan Johnson on the mound. Then again, opponent Ryan Dempster has an 11.37 career ERA at Coors Field. I think we're looking at our first true slugfest of 2011.