Colorado plays in Phoenix at 8:37, and it's Jeff Francis against Brandon Webb. You may recall that this is a repeat of a matchup the Rox and D-Backs had a couple weeks ago, when Colorado was struggling to get into the playoffs. Well, Webb won that game, handing the Rockies their only loss since September 15. That's right - the Rockies have lost once in the last 26 days. They've won 17 of their last 18 games.
While you wait for the game to start, you may want to check out this ESPN article and this USS Mariner article, which actually came first. (Hat tip to Primer on the latter article.) Both are about the general managers of the four remaining teams, and how all of them except the Red Sox's Theo Epstein came from John Hart's Indians, just like our new GM Neal Huntington. It's not all peaches and cream, of course - Rockies GM Dan O'Dowd bumbled along for years before assembling this team, and Josh Byrnes and the Diamondbacks got outscored this year and are lucky to have gotten this far. Of the three, only the Indians' Mark Shapiro deserves to be recognized as one of the game's top GMs (although Byrnes may well get to that level eventually). But anyway, it's nice to get a sense of what's possible.