The Major League Baseball season is 162 games of mostly gruel, mixed in with occasional lobster thermidor and hot fudge sundae. One hundred sixty two of anything will unearth bits of awesomeness among the everyday fare, the exception being every song ever produced by the Steve Miller Band.
For the Colorado Rockies, who sit at a historically-to-this-point good mark of 47-29, they are essentially playing their remaining 86 games for the chance of just one more.
With more than half the season left, it’s hard to say how the season will break. But what is known is that the top of the National League West is very good. And the new leader of the division, the Los Angeles Dodgers, are starting to look a class ahead of the Rockies – again.
The Dodgers have been and are still expected to run away with the division at some point – and that may have started this past week with their eight-game win streak. As the following chart from FanGraphs shows, the analytics people like the Dodgers’ chances better than the Rockies.
I completely agree with all these metrics. The Dodgers are talented, deep at all positions and pretty much have the means to acquire whomever they want with their solid farm system and high budget.
This leaves the Rockies in a tenuous spot, thanks to the 2012 change in the Wild Card format which expanded MLB’s postseason from eight to 10 teams. If the season ended today, the Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks would be the two wild-card teams. And, with an 8.5 game clearance of the Chicago Cubs—which Fangraphs expects them to win the NL Central—the next-highest wildcard odds, after the Rockies at 83 percent, are the St. Louis Cardinals at 6.6 percent.
What all of this means: Based on the numbers and probabilities right now, it’s likely Arizona and Colorado will be facing off in a one-game Wild Card play-in game in October to advance to the National League Divisional Series.
Anything can happen in one game of baseball. Anything can happen in one game of anything (except a game between the Colorado Avalanche and any other NHL team, in which we already know the other team will win). Look, minor-league teams regularly beat Major League teams in spring training and, every once in a while, a college team will knock of a big-league club too. This might not be the best example, but it’s worth mentioning. And for the Rockies, they’re in a situation where they pretty much know: The next 86 games probably will decide one thing only. That is, the right to play one more game.
One can go on a righteous diatribe about the ridiculous concept of one game of baseball deciding things, when even during the regular season match-ups are usually divided into threes. If you don’t think this recent format is crazy, ask Pittsburgh Pirates fans about it.
But this is the hill the Rockies must be prepared to die upon. Having the chance to play one nine-inning game to advance further into October it is, for the team’s long-suffering fans, like being served lobster thermidor instead of the usual gruel.
What can Colorado do to increase the odds of winning that, for now, still-theoretical one-game showdown?
Well, they could deplete their farm system for rental help, but that won’t happen.
They might acquire a strong reliever to make that theoretical nine-inning game theoretically one inning shorter. They would be able to do this without altering their contention window.
They may just ride it out with the pieces they have in the organization, hoping to play well and get lucky. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
But no matter what: The fact that the Colorado Rockies have 86 games of baseball that people around here will actually care about is a treat that should be enjoyed.
To quote the late, great Julia Child: Bon appetit.
