Home for 11 Days

The Rockies completed their last short road trip before the last weekend of the season by taking two of three games against Cincinnati, who has the best Home record in the Major Leagues.  Correction HAD the best home record which now belongs to the Atlanta Braves.

With the Cincinnati Trip, the Rockies completed all but 3 of their road games against the NL Central.  The remaining series is in Pittsburgh Aug 2-4.    They have yet to play an NL Central team at home.   Their first game at Home is against the Cubs on July 19 following the All-Star Break.   The Rockies are 6-6 vs. the NL Central for the season.

On the flip side the Home stand that the Rockies are about to embark on will see two NL East teams come in, leaving them with only games against Miami July 22-25, and the makeup game with the Mets on June 27 as NL East home games.   The Rockies first visit to the NL East is on the next Road Trip  June 20th at Washington, the remainder are in Late July and August.

Quirky schedule to be sure, but not the quirkiest thing I've found in any schedule.  In an unbelievable scheduling quirk, AL Central Teams Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox have their first meeting of the year on July 9, which is the 89th game for Detroit, and 88th for the Sox.  How does it happen that a two division opponents never meet in the first half of the season?   Keep in mind that the 4 division opponents of each team account for 76 of the 162 games.  In fact the AL Central schedule overall is overloaded in the second half of the season for Intra-Division games.  For example 57 of the White Sox final 75 games are vs. Detroit, Kansas City, Cleveland and Minnesota.   Another oddity:  Detroit has played Minnesota 10 times but the rest of the division 4 times (although there were two rainouts which would have made it 10-6).

The most games that anyone in the AL Central has played in its own division is Minnesota with 22.  The other 4 teams have played either 16 or 17.  In the rest of the Major Leagues, The Cubs have the fewest games in their own division with 22.  For the NL West, no team has less than 28.  The Rockies and Toronto have the most with 32 although the Rockies will be alone at 33 after tonight's game.

For the Rockies overall they play 37 NL West games in the first 81 games and 39 in the 2nd half.