The stadium scene.

Defense Rocks!How Colorado's fielding wizardry will change baseball forever.

By Eriq GardnerPosted Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2007, at 2:21 PM ET

Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado RockiesBaseball is usually seen as a clash between pitchers and hitters—a test of wills between the guy on the mound and the slugger at the plate. The defense, on the other hand, is praised and scorned in extreme circumstances, glimpsed only in the final few moments on Baseball Tonight, and all but ignored when sportswriters call upon team management to find nirvana by signing Johan Santana or Alex Rodriguez. But if there's ever a time to focus on the guys with gloves, it's the 2007 World Series. This year's Colorado Rockies are perhaps the greatest defensive team in baseball history. It's even possible that their defensive prowess will change the way the game is played and the way teams are constructed.

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In 2003, Michael Lewis' Moneyball showed how Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane used statistics to find undervalued players. Back then, these were typically guys like Scott Hatteberg who drew walks to keep innings going. By the time Lewis published the book, the secret was out and the art of plate discipline was no longer undervalued. Beane and other smart GMs around baseball had already moved on to the next great statistical frontier: defense.

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In 2004, Chris Kahrl wrote that the Colorado Rockies shouldn't blame Coors Field for their lousy record. Justin Peters created a guide to help you fake your way through baseball's postseason. Slate's resident mathematician, Jordan Ellenberg, explained how to build a better World Series.

Colorado seems like an odd laboratory to experiment with a team built around defense. The team plays at Coors Field, which sits a mile above sea level. High altitudes mean less break on pitches. Hard-hit balls travel farther because of the thin air, and when they don't go for home runs, they typically land in the stadium's spacious outfield. (Coors Field has the deepest fences in all of baseball.) In 2002, Joe Sheehan on Baseball Prospectus wrote that "the physics issues may preclude anyone from being a good defender at altitude."

In retrospect, though, Coors Field was the perfect place to probe the value of defense. The team has tried pretty much everything else since hiring GM Dan O'Dowd in 1999. O'Dowd has studied weather patterns, tried out a humidor to control scoring, and toyed with a four-man pitching rotation. Much of O'Dowd's work, such as research into the type of pitcher it would take to conquer Coors, resulted in bone-headed decisions like investing nearly $175 million in Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle. The team continued to lose, attendance fell, and the Sporting News belittled the club in 2002, saying they were "trotting out Plan G, or maybe it's Plan H."

Whatever plan they're on now, it's working. The Rockies enter this year's World Series with one of the least-experienced pitching staffs ever to reach the championship round. These pitchers struck out the third-fewest batters of any staff in baseball, walked the ninth-fewest batters, and—with an assist from Coors Field's ballyhooed humidor—kept home runs from being too much of a problem. In other words, the pitchers pitched to contact, daring opposing batters to put the ball into play.

The result?