Are the Dodgers the right target for the Rockies?

The Colorado Rockies are in the same division as the Los Angeles Dodgers but they are not in the same league.

And if this is news to you, I am sorry.

But let me be as blunt and brutal to an audience of Rockies’ fans as I can be: Your team will always be the underdogs.

They cannot compete with the Dodgers in terms of finances, clout, history, media power, global reach, attractiveness to free agents, or closeness to Hollywood. They can’t compete with a $2 billion TV deal on or off the field. And they never will.

Neither does anyone else, but putting aside for a moment that they are not just the bullies of the NL West but that they have become the Yankees of the entire National League, it is important to recognize that from now through the foreseeable future, The Los Angeles Dodgers are going to be the better team on paper every single season.

It may be a harsh reality, but welcome to it.

Yesterdays news was anything but new.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Colorado can’t or shouldn’t find ways to compete. They must. But what they absolutely cannot afford to do is try to emulate, or “keep up with” the Dodgers. Over the course of 162 games, they will always have the advantage, and the first step toward mitigating it is to recognize it.

Luckily for the Rockies in this regard, baseball is a little bit less of a marathon than it used to be. The introduction of the second Wild Card gives far more hope to teams stuck in divisions with juggernauts than they did just a few years ago. So does the success rate of those Wild Cards.

Teams like the Washington Nationals last year, Kansas City Royals twice, or the San Francisco Giants three times in the decade, show that winning a World Series in the modern era has been as much about making it to the dance and getting hot at the right time, as it is having the most talented team according to the numbers.

This is the path the Rockies must always walk. And it will always be more painful.

Just like with those teams, winning will be chalked up to fortune. You needn’t look further than each of the best campaigns in franchise history, all of which have been dismissed as good luck. Because when a team that the prognosticators didn’t prognosticate to win does win, it can’t be that they were wrong.

This isn’t to say that the Rockies have accomplished the goal of putting themselves in a position to make these kinds of runs often enough throughout their history. They clearly have not.

But Mookie Betts and David Price joining the division is simply the second verse which is the same as the first.

We could pour over the numbers that suggest the Dodgers may have actually sent out cumulatively the same amount of talent that they brought in. We could further point out how this makes them more vulnerable to injury. We could also choose to act like Betts isn’t one of the best players in MLB. But we aren’t going to do any of that.

Ultimately, though, very little has changed since the trade became official on Tuesday. The Dodgers were going to be the best team in the NL on paper in 2020. They still will be. Whether they win 95 games or 100 doesn’t really change the equation for Colorado, or frankly anyone else trying to be the next Washington Nationals. They were never the best team on paper either.

Good thing they don’t play on paper.