Colorado Rockies blistering start is best understood through their losses

The Colorado Rockies are 10-3.

In this unique year, that gives them a 77 percent winning percentage through roughly 24 percent of the season.

Debate is arising about whether or not anyone could or should have expected this, how much of it is to be truly believed, and whether or not it means anything for the future.

Regular readers and listeners to the DNVR Rockies Podcast are almost certainly not surprised by what is transpiring out on the field and we could all pour through the interesting tidbits about each win to show exactly why this club keeping putting tallies in the win column.

But that would be a little on the nose, don’t you think?

Yes, they’ve been getting excellent starting pitching, a few members of the bullpen who were question marks before the season have stepped up in a big way, and a couple of veterans and a few youngsters are adding more value that the projections projected.

If you look at any team without endless resources who happens to be competing, though, and you will almost certainly see a similar pattern.

What is even more interesting than where Colorado is getting their wins – are we really surprised by the results of excellent pitching and timely hitting? – is the way they are suffering their losses.

With just three so far on the season, taking a look at each one reveals just how fundamentally good the Colorado club is right now.

The Season Opener

The first game they lost was the first one they played and their starting pitcher, German Marquez, took a no-hitter into the sixth inning.

The Rockies arguably outplayed the Rangers for most of the contest, throwing out more baserunners and forcing the starter to throw over 100 pitches in 6 innings. That starter, by the way, is named Lance Lynn, he came in fifth in Cy Young voting in 2019 and has given up just one run in his first three outings this year.

Colorado hit three balls in that game that easily could have swung the 1-0 loss in their favor. With runners aboard, Charlie Blackmon, Trevor Story, and Nolan Arenado each hit screaming line drives late in the game. Blackmon’s went just foul. Story’s and Arenado’s died in the deepest part of the ballpark out in left-center field in the thick air of Texas. (Hey if they can talk about how much water is in the air, so can we.)

The pitching staff gave up just three hits in the game. Two of them happen to come back-to-back and that accounted for the loss.

The Home Opener

If it is “arguable” that the Rockies outplayed the Rangers in the first game of the year, it is almost a slam-dunk fact that they did so against the Padres in the first game at home.

The boys in purple out-hit and out-pitched their opponents for 8.2 innings of baseball and were a strike away from securing a win before closer Wade Davis completely imploded, giving up a game-tying homer to Fernando Tatis Jr., walking a pair of batters, and then serving up another longball to Tommy Pham.

You would think that alone would sink the Rockies but even then they somehow managed to come back and get the tying run to third and the winning run to second in the bottom of the ninth. Chris Owings couldn’t come through in the final at-bat of the game but a ball in the dirt there and the Rockies likely win. A soft single to center and they certainly do. Even after their closer gave up four runs in three minutes.

This 8-7 loss stung and had all the hallmarks of the 2019 season that went sideways so quickly… except for the fact that they almost came back and won anyway and went on to win the next two games comfortably.

The One That Got Away

The only game of the season in which the win probability graphs showed the opposition in control for most of the contest was a 4-3 loss to the Giants on August 5.

Even then, though, the biggest moment of the game was a three-run wall-scrapping home run by Brandon Belt that had, according to StatCast, only a three percent chance of being a hit given it’s relatively tame exit velocity and less than idea launch angle.

It also came after an uncharacteristic error from Gold Glove nominee shortstop Trevor Story.

Like in both of the other losses, Colorado had several opportunities for the offense to take this one back anyway but the hard line drives ended up in gloves rather than gaps.

So What Now?

Cynics and skeptics will look to the Rockies start of the season and suggest that they are “hot” or that they are getting lucky, or that what they are doing is unsustainable. They will say that everything that could go right has gone right for this club.

But that isn’t even close to being true.

Nolan Arenado has hit three home runs but other than that has been a ghost on offense, hitting just .204. David Dahl has likewise gone quiet after a good start, sitting at just a .240 average. Ryan McMahon has begun the year in a slump, hitting just .214 and striking out 40 percent of the time. And despite the fact that he’s hitting the ball harder, Tony Wolters results are down across the board.

So while Chris Owings and Matt Kemp probably won’t hit as well as they have for the rest of the season, them cooling off is likely to coincide with somebody from that other group heating up.

Surely they’ve been lucky in the bullpen though, right?

You could call the story of Daniel Bard good luck or quality scouting and coaching. The rest of these guys have been as advertised though.

Carlos Estevez has long been one of the best kept secrets in baseball and Jairo Diaz became one last year. They’ve picked up right where they left off a season ago, showing the same troubles as well. Neither has been close to perfect, but both continue to show why they were expected to be a force at the back-end of this bullpen.

Tyler Kinley has had excellent strikeout stuff and kept runs off the board his entire professional career down in Florida and has simply brought that same profile to Colorado with perhaps a bit more polish in the early going. Certainly nothing mind-blowing for a 27-year-old to do.

It’s hard to argue that a team is currently without both presumed closers has gotten lucky in the ‘pen, especially when you see the results of an army of dudes throwing absolute gas.

And the rotation?

DNVR subscribers aren’t the least bit surprised about this rotation.

You can nitpick the 10 games that the Colorado Rockies have won so far in 2020. There are points of data to give pause for sure. And no one will feel supreme confidence until wins start piling up against the likes of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But you can just as easily nitpick the three games that the Colorado Rockies have lost and see a team that isn’t just playing good baseball against some good and some not-so-good competition.

The Colorado Rockies are a team that has already suffered setbacks and bad luck and bad breaks and the normal cold spells that come from a game where failure is so common… and they are three pitches away from being undefeated.