Basebrawl: Giants, meet shovel

This whole Basebrawl idea, in which we would trash talk with the San Francisco Giants lovers at our sister publication, the SF Weekly, along the road to the playoffs, hasn't turned out to be much of a fight. Moments ago, I cyber-ambled over to the Weekly's news blog to see how the paper would spin a 1-3 series against the Chicago Cubs. However, the only Giants blog up so far this morning concerns relief pitcher Justin Miller, who has a lot of tattoos. I didn't see any of them that read, "When's my tee time?," but maybe I missed it. Take a look for yourself: Not that the Weekly scribes should be whacked around for giving up on their ballers too early. The Giants are five games back in the wild-card standings with six to play, which doesn't eliminate them mathematically, but close enough.

That means the Rockies main concern right now is the Atlanta Braves, who trail by two-and-a-half and are matched up against the beyond-hapless Washington Nationals for four of their last seven, all of them at home. The good news: The Braves play the Florida Marlins, who ain't bad, for a three-game series beginning tonight. If the Rockies can sweep the Brewers at home -- a tough task, but doable, especially after they took two of three from the Cardinals over the weekend -- and the Marlins can steal one or even two (a guy can dream) from the Braves, the real trash-talking can begin.