Forget the splits between road and home. Look at the Weekday/Weekend splits for the Rockies.
For games on Friday-Sunday, the Rockies have compiled a 29-19 Record, on Monday-Thursday the Rockies are 19-32. Take away Tuesdays (9-8) record and the Rockies are 10-24 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Last year the Rockies were a combined 10-41 on Saturdays and Sundays, and 54-57 on the other five days.
The Rockies have a chance to improve that weekday record vs. the 29th worst team in Baseball, the Miami Marlins. Of course nothing is a given as the Rockies lost 3 of 4 games to the 30th worst team in baseball--the Astros in May. Since June 5th however, the Marlins have a 19-17 record, while the Rockies are 16-23.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
At The Break
The Rockies stumbled into the All-Star Break 46-50 squandering another good week of pitching (giving up 16 runs in 7 games). They now find themselves 4.5 games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and 2 games behind the Dodgers, who look on the verge of running away with this thing if they continue the 17-5 pace they are on since June 21. As an aside 3 of those 5 losses are to the Rockies.
They won't continue the pace, but will they slump? Proabably at some point. The NL West goes into a stretch of 6 weeks where they will predominately play the NL East, NL Central and AL East. The Diamondbacks go to San Francisco this weekend and will Host the Padres next weekend, which will leave all the West teams with home and home series against everyone else in August and September.
I always start the year believing that 90 wins will win the division. For the Rockies to achieve that they would need to almost double their win total of 46. Thus they would need to go 44-22 the rest of the way. In 2007 and 2009 the Rockies finished their regular season 40-26 in the last 66 games. Doing that again would put the Rockies at 86-76, possibly enough to win the division.
Following my leading indicator of Road Wins - Home Losses, the Rockies currently are -1. That number will probably go down in the next 10 days with the home stand coming up. Arizona currently leads the West with a +3 the only teams that is positive. LA is -3, SF is -2 and SD is -8. Also remember that nobody in the west has a winning record on the road.
In the final 2.5 months the Rockies will need to put together a winning run of some sort. Maybe the 13-4 that they started the season with, but it will require them to have at least one winning road trip of 3 losses or less, combined with a dominant performance at home. Let's say they can go 22-12 at home the rest of the way....not unreasonable. They would then need to play above .500 on the Road maybe 18-14.
It seems the pitching staff as a whole have learned how to pitch, especially Chacin, DeLaRosa and Chatwood. If they can have predominately good starts, and the hitting can stay healthy and start producing runs, this team could contend down to the wire.
They won't continue the pace, but will they slump? Proabably at some point. The NL West goes into a stretch of 6 weeks where they will predominately play the NL East, NL Central and AL East. The Diamondbacks go to San Francisco this weekend and will Host the Padres next weekend, which will leave all the West teams with home and home series against everyone else in August and September.
I always start the year believing that 90 wins will win the division. For the Rockies to achieve that they would need to almost double their win total of 46. Thus they would need to go 44-22 the rest of the way. In 2007 and 2009 the Rockies finished their regular season 40-26 in the last 66 games. Doing that again would put the Rockies at 86-76, possibly enough to win the division.
Following my leading indicator of Road Wins - Home Losses, the Rockies currently are -1. That number will probably go down in the next 10 days with the home stand coming up. Arizona currently leads the West with a +3 the only teams that is positive. LA is -3, SF is -2 and SD is -8. Also remember that nobody in the west has a winning record on the road.
In the final 2.5 months the Rockies will need to put together a winning run of some sort. Maybe the 13-4 that they started the season with, but it will require them to have at least one winning road trip of 3 losses or less, combined with a dominant performance at home. Let's say they can go 22-12 at home the rest of the way....not unreasonable. They would then need to play above .500 on the Road maybe 18-14.
It seems the pitching staff as a whole have learned how to pitch, especially Chacin, DeLaRosa and Chatwood. If they can have predominately good starts, and the hitting can stay healthy and start producing runs, this team could contend down to the wire.
Monday, July 8, 2013
How the Rockies Can Help Their Pitching: Start Hitting!
In the pre-season and first couple months of the season the Rockies and the local press has raved about the Rockies and their hitting. However, much of it is a mirage.
The Rockies have just ended a 3 week stretch in which they have scored a total of 57 runs in 19 games or just under 3 per game. Only the Giants have been worse in the entire MLB. Up until June 16th, the Rockies had scored a league leading (and 2nd in the MLB overall) 352 runs.
Today, the Rockies find themselves with 409 runs scored and 409 runs scored against. And the conventional wisdom is that the Pitching is letting them down, as there is lot of talk about the Rockies acquiring another starter, reliever, live arm etc. But look at the distribution of the games, and you'll find that the pitching has really been doing the job this season. Let's face it, no Rockies team is going to throw a ton of shutouts in a season or even 1 or 2 run games. It requires a balance of keeping the Rockies in the game and the offense scoring 5, 6, or 7 runs in a game.
Never was this more evident than in the past 3 weeks. Yes the Rockies pitching gave up 100 runs during the 19 games, but some of that is caused by the pressure of not having runs scored behind them. Of the 57 runs scored by the Rockies, they scored 31 of them in 4 games. in the other 15 they only scored 26 runs, well under 2 runs per game. In fact in 11 of those games they scored 2 runs or less. Scoring 3 twice and 4 twice. Granted the pitching gave up 6 or more runs 7 times in that stretch, but losing 11-1 or 11-4 is not much different than losing 1-0 or 5-4. The Rockies did win 1 game 2-1, and lost another 8-10. They also won all 3 games that the Pitchers gave up 1 run, lost all 3 games in which the pitchers gave up 2 or 3 runs, and lost 5 of 6 games where the pitching only gave up 5 runs.
Eventually the hitting will come out and play again--hopefully before the Rockies are buried. But the current Rockies problems with the pitching doesn't lie as much with the pitching as it does with the hitting to help ease the pressure of needing to throw shut-outs or low run games. It's just not going to happen that way.
The Rockies have just ended a 3 week stretch in which they have scored a total of 57 runs in 19 games or just under 3 per game. Only the Giants have been worse in the entire MLB. Up until June 16th, the Rockies had scored a league leading (and 2nd in the MLB overall) 352 runs.
Today, the Rockies find themselves with 409 runs scored and 409 runs scored against. And the conventional wisdom is that the Pitching is letting them down, as there is lot of talk about the Rockies acquiring another starter, reliever, live arm etc. But look at the distribution of the games, and you'll find that the pitching has really been doing the job this season. Let's face it, no Rockies team is going to throw a ton of shutouts in a season or even 1 or 2 run games. It requires a balance of keeping the Rockies in the game and the offense scoring 5, 6, or 7 runs in a game.
Never was this more evident than in the past 3 weeks. Yes the Rockies pitching gave up 100 runs during the 19 games, but some of that is caused by the pressure of not having runs scored behind them. Of the 57 runs scored by the Rockies, they scored 31 of them in 4 games. in the other 15 they only scored 26 runs, well under 2 runs per game. In fact in 11 of those games they scored 2 runs or less. Scoring 3 twice and 4 twice. Granted the pitching gave up 6 or more runs 7 times in that stretch, but losing 11-1 or 11-4 is not much different than losing 1-0 or 5-4. The Rockies did win 1 game 2-1, and lost another 8-10. They also won all 3 games that the Pitchers gave up 1 run, lost all 3 games in which the pitchers gave up 2 or 3 runs, and lost 5 of 6 games where the pitching only gave up 5 runs.
Eventually the hitting will come out and play again--hopefully before the Rockies are buried. But the current Rockies problems with the pitching doesn't lie as much with the pitching as it does with the hitting to help ease the pressure of needing to throw shut-outs or low run games. It's just not going to happen that way.
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