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The prolonged slide of the Colorado Rockies has continued to the extent that many here in the Rocky Mountain West are concerned more than a little bit.

We expected a great deal more after that incredible late-season surge that led to a National League championship for Colorado. Was that wonderful run last autumn just a fleeting fantasy, a mirage?

By winning 21 of their last 22 games in 2007, the Rockies left us with a belief that anything was possible, and I expected this ball club to pick right up where they left off last time around.

That hasn’t been the case; it’s quite the contrary. At last week’s end, Colorado had the worst record in all of major league baseball with only 20 wins at the end of May.

With nearly one-third of the season completed, the Rockies are dead last in the N.L. West, more than 10 games behind division leading Arizona.

At the start of the season, the National League West was being heralded as perhaps the toughest division in baseball, but the Diamondbacks are the only team in the division with a solid winning record. Every other team is struggling, but not as much as Colorado.

No one I know has a real answer to what has gone wrong with the Rockies. Naturally, one can point to several reasons for the club’s demise.

Basically, the hitting has been anemic, except in some isolated cases when the Colorado bats come alive.

And the pitching has been spotty. When a Rockies pitcher on rare outings has a solid performance, the hitting takes a holiday, so a decent mound performance is wasted.

And now a series of injuries has put some of the more productive players on the shelf. Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holliday, Brad Hawpe and Clint Barmes have spent time on the disabled list and that has taken a toll on the club’s offensive potential.

The pitching staff also has had health problems, and the rotation has been anything but solid.

There are rumblings in Denver concerning the future of Manager Clint Hurdle. There is an old baseball saying that it is impossible to fire 25 ballplayers, but it isn’t nearly as hard to discharge a manager.

It appears to me as if Hurdle has been making just about every conceivable move to get his ball club to turn things around. His line-up has been in a constant state of flux, as he attempts to put the right players in the right spots n trying to capture lightning in a bottle and turn the Rockies’ fortunes around.

The club’s front office could panic and try to pick up some established talent in some player trades, but that is costly, and we have seen that practice fail in the past.

So what can be done? Thankfully, the baseball season is lengthy, and although unlikely, the Rockies still could get back to respectable. When their regulars return to action, we should see some improvement.

After all, several of the Rockies have proven success in past years, so it is logical to assume they will not continue to struggle so mightily over the long haul. At least that line of reasoning seems to be the only way I can remain interested in what is happening at Coors Field.

Things have got to get better. At least that is my story and I am sticking to it.

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