At the Quarter-Pole

Last night the Rockies completed the first quarter of the season (40 games) with a 21-19 record.  That includes an 10-12 record in the 22 games played on the road and 11-7 in the 18 Home games.   The good news is that the second quarter will consist of  22 of the next 30 games played at Coors Field.  Followed by a 9 game road trip to the East before making up a game with the Mets to finish out the first half of the season.  This includes 17 NL West games-- 14 at home, and 3 in San Francisco.

The good news of the first quarter is the Rockies have been better than expected.   Last year they were 8-14 on the Road to start the season, and 15-25 overall.   The Rockies actually improved slightly over the rest of the season as the first quarter expanded for the entire season would have been 61-101.    Last year strangely, they were pretty consistent in each Quarter.
1) 15-25
2) 16-25 (31-50)
3) 17-23 (48-73)
4) 16-25 (64-98)

Admittedly, that's a bit unusual to be that consistent.   Or is it?

The Rockies Recent history shows that there is a lot of consistency in quarters.  Here are the wins by quarters from 2003-2012
2012--15, 16, 17, 16 --Total 64
2011--22, 17, 17, 17 --Total 73
2010--19, 24, 19, 21-- Total 83
2009--16, 26, 25, 25-- Total 92
2008--15, 17, 21, 21-- Total 74
2007--17, 22, 23, 27-- Total 89* After 162 Games
2006--22, 20, 17, 17-- Total 76
2005--12, 16, 17, 22-- Total 67
2004--17, 15, 22, 14-- Total 68
2003--19, 22, 18, 14-- Total 74

As you can see, in every single season the Rockies have had at least two quarters with total wins within plus or minus 2 wins.  In 5 or half the years, the Rockies have had three or more quarters of a similar win total plus or minus 2.  In two years, 2006 and 2008, the Rockies had 2 different pairs of quarters, and of course last year all 4 quarters were consistent.   Also on a negative note, each season except for 2010 has contained at least one quarter that has 17 or fewer wins.

What does this tell us about 2013?  Nothing yet, except that we can expect at least one more quarter that has 20-24 wins, 2 quarters that are below 20 wins within two wins of each other and/or two quarters that have more than 24 wins.

How does that extrapolate to the rest of the season?
Let's say the Rockies have one quarter of 17 wins as history shows.  That would give them a total of 38 wins in half a season. For the other two quarters the Rockies would need a total of 43 wins (21, 22?) to be .500. They would need 52 (26, 26?) to get to 90 wins.

But if the Rockies worst quarter was this one, and they get 23, 23, 23 the rest of the way, they will also have 90 wins.

The bad news for the Rockies is they are 8-15 after starting the season 13-4.  But overall the results were good for the first quarter.

The Division leaders are the Giants who had 23 wins in their first quarter.  And they come to town tonight.