Colorado Rockies road warriors come out to play

DENVER – In the not-so-ancient history of the Colorado Rockies, they have been widely known for a number of things even if their best players are often overlooked. Coors Field is almost universally praised for its beauty and bemoaned for how it impacts baseball games. The lineups have always been seen as big and bombastic, even when that was a stretch, and the pitching has typically been seen as horrible, even when that was a stretch.

But one thing you could pretty much always count on was the Rockies being much better at home than they were on the road. Whether they were fantastic in Denver and just mediocre away from LoDo, or mediocre at home and awful on the road, they’ve tended to keep the pattern.

The Rockies all-time home record is 1044-883. That’s a 54 percent win rate. Over a 162 game season, that marks out to about 88 wins which would put them near postseason contention each year if they only played their games at home. Their road record? A disastrous 759-1171.

But this season, though it’s still early, Colorado has flipped the script.

They currently stand with a record of 8-7 at home and 11-5 out on the road. But it’s not just the games they are winning. Across the board, the Rockies are playing better baseball away from home. They rank first in MLB with a road ERA of 3.23 and an opponent batting average of .219. The bullpen, which has been a huge factor in the club’s improvements, has a 2.03 ERA away from Denver opposed to 5.88 at the friendly confines.

Of course, some of these numbers are a bit out of whack thanks to a series against the Washington Nationals at Coors Field where approximately seven thousand runs were scored.

If anything, that might be an indication that this team could easily reestablish the kind of dominance at home they have become know for. The road success could also regress back to the mean, it’s too early to draw conclusions either way, but this is just one more sign that these are not your typical Colorado Rockies.