The future starts now for the Colorado Rockies

Welcome to September 1st, Colorado Rockies fans!

The Rockies closed out August with a thrilling walk-off win against the Arizona Diamondbacks that featured a wild 9th inning in which the Rockies didn’t quit, despite being down by three runs. Ben Paulsen fought off an 0-2 pitch up the middle to score two runs and complete a four-run rally to win 5-4. The game represented what the Rockies are in desperate need of in the month of September. The Rockies must battle and get better in September. They must see what their young players can bring to the table at the big league level and they must build a chemistry that can carry into the 2016 season.

For many teams, the first day of September represents a time where a fan needs to buckle up their seatbelts and get ready for a furious race to the finish line, one in which their team is trying to scrape up as many wins as possible in an effort to scratch their way into the postseason.

For the Rockies and their fans, September 1st represents the light at the end of the tunnel. It represents a chance to finally see another brutal season come to a merciful end. With just over a month to go in the season, the misery of another forgettable year will be in the rear view mirror soon enough.

It would be easy for the Rockies to cash it in. It would be easy for them to look forward to offseason plans, start thinking about contracts, trades and the potential of being on a better team in 2016. For the younger players, it might be easy to start looking towards the offseason and trying to get a break form a season that went poorly.

September also represents a chance for the team to call up players on the 40-man roster that have deserved a shot to prove what they can do at the big league level, but would have required a roster move to get them there. With expanded rosters, the team can load up a bullpen with as many bullpen arms as they need, or fill the dugout with bench players to their 40-man-rosters hearts content.

The Rockies only remaining task to complete in 2015 is to remain as just one of three teams that has never lost 100 games in a season. Beyond that, the tasks all represent the future.

The biggest fight that the Rockies have to battle isn’t who they are facing on the mound, or what teams will be coming through Coors Field. Instead, they are going to have to battle the ever-present feeling to not mail it in and hope for better results in 2016.

The temptation might be great. After all, the 2015 season will end with the same conclusion, regardless of how the Rockies finish the season. The team will fall well short of the postseason and will remain a laughingstock of baseball. However, that doesn’t mean that the Rockies should cash it in.

This team, with some young players either making their way to the roster on Tuesday when the rosters expand, or somewhere down the line as the minor league seasons  conclude, must continue to play hard baseball. This Rockies team must pretend like they are in a pennant race and that every single game matters.

The reason for this is simple. The Rockies aren’t good enough to not take advantage of every game, and every day, to get better. They need every spare second that they have to see what kind of talent is going to be available to them in 2016 and they need to take every chance they have to have some of the younger players start to adapt to the big league level now, when games don’t really matter.

Games down the stretch in September might not mean anything for the win or loss column, but young guys can start working on double play combinations. Pitchers can continue to tweak their mechanics and find out which pitches will get outs against big league hitters.

The September stretch run is big for the Rockies, not because they can play spoiler and not because the results of games matter, but because it gives them a chance for to get better, to gel as a team in the dugout and in the clubhouse. It also gives the front office a chance to see which arms might slot well in the bullpen or starting rotation next year.

September games might not matter for the Rockies, but the reality is, they represent a chance for the team to get better and start the process of climbing out of the cellar that they have been stuck in since the end of the 2010 season.