Let's Forget About the Wild Card

That's right forget about it. Let's start thinking about the NL West Title.

Matt Holliday helped the Rockies tonight by knocking in the game winning run against the Dodgers in the 9th inning to move the Rockies to within 3.5 games of the Dodgers. The last time they were this close to first place was on April 17th when they were 4-5.

Don't look now but the Rockies (and the Giants) are now in a division race with the Dodgers. And they are in it despite not playing their best ball of the season over the past 3 weeks. Wednesday night's game was typical of this "slump" where they have not gotten key hits. With 10 walks they should have blown the Nationals away, but they eked out a 5-4 win to go 12-9 over the past 21 games since the last time they played the Giants.

But they find a way to win, while the Dodgers have been finding ways to lose. During the same stretch, the Dodgers are 9-13 and are 10-15 since July 22nd. During that stretch they have only won 2 consecutive games twice. In fact since the Rockies and Dodgers last met, (and they got Manny Ramirez back) the Dodgers are a .500 ballclub going 21-21. The Rockies meanwhile are 25-16.

Let's stop talking about the Wild Card and let's go for the West. The mindset doesn't change, go out and win the next game, but what was once unthinkable in early June is now possible.


ROAD SUCCESS: With the win on Wednesday, the Rockies have guaranteed their 7th non-losing road trip of the year and 6th in a row. They have only had two losing road trips, going 2-6 on their second trip of the year, and 2-3 on their 3rd.

MARQUIS DE FLOP?: Is it really necessary to bring up Marquis' alleged history of second half flops every time something goes right--or wrong. We just need to let the rest of the season unfold and then look in retrospect. He will have good games and bad games down the stretch, each individual outing does not a trend make. The one good sign is that the blister problem seems to have gone away, and Jason can continue to concentrate on other aspects of his season. I'm not even convinced the "2nd Half flop" is even real. According to Baseball-Reference.com He is 33-39 in the 2nd half vs. 60-39 in the 1st (as determined by the All-Star Break) and his ERA after the AS Break is 4.83 vs. 4.16 before. That's fine if you just look at the raw stats, but keep in mind that 60% of his starts are before the All-Star Break, and he was not a full-time starter until 2004. So let's drill down a little bit. He is 51-32 and 4.19 in those 6 seasons in the 1st Half, and 28-31 4.81 in the 2nd. In those 6 years he's always had a winning first half, and in all but two years, he's had a winning 2nd half. His biggest discrepancy was 2006 when he was 11-6 vs. 3-10 from 1st half to 2nd half. But that year he was horrible all year. His 1st half ERA was 5.55, second half 6.72. Take that year out and the differential isn't bad. The guy is a workhorse, averaging over 6 innings per start throughout his career. If he gets the Rockies to the 7th inning in most starts, then he's done his job, because it's still a game at that point. I don't really care what his specific W/L splits are, he's still doing the job, and always has--except for 2006. Which makes it the exception not the rule.

The one stat you have to remember with Marquis is that he's never missed the Playoffs in the Majors with the team he's been on.