The Road Woes

The Rockies have never been a good road team. Except for 2007 and 2009, they have never been anywhere close to .500 on the road. The biggest surprise of 2009 was the Rockies actually got kick-started on the road to the Wild Card on the road by winning the first 8 of their season high 11 game winning streak on an 11 game road trip. After dropping 3 in a row to Houston, they salvaged the last game, then swept 4 in St. Louis and 3 in Milwaukee.

Hopes were high this year as the Rockies headed into the All-Star break winning 8 of 10 at home and embarking on the season's longest road trip of 11. The Rockies of course, tanked it, losing 3 of the first 5, then dropping the final 6, to take them to 20-32 on the road.

The Rockies are gangbusters at home, winning 36 of 55 at home. Even if they were to continue that pace the rest of the season (18-8) they would finish 75-60, without the 27 remaining road games.

Simplified, they would need to go 15-12 on the road to hit 90 wins, which is always my target for the Wild Card slot. 20-7 and they would have 95 wins, and a probable NL West title as 18 of their remaining road games are against the NL West. A big road kick now would be huge.

Which brings up another point. The NL West still has 44% of their composite games against each other (79 intra-division games of 180 total for the season). That means there are 158 decisions to be made in direct competition with the West. Each team has 30-33 remaining games vs. the West. There are also 78 composite games against the Central Division with the Padres having the most at 21. The Dodgers have the most games remaining against the East with 13 of the 32 composite games left.

The Padres probably have the most favorable schedule left although they still have two 9 game road trips each going to two other time zones. The Rockies don't go East of the Mississippi after this road trip, and play all their games, except the season finale series against St. Louis in the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones.