Is This the Race we Thought We had in 2017?

In 2017, the NL West was one of the hottest races in MLB for the first 2 and a half months.  On Father's Day, 2017, the Rockies led the NL West and the NL with a 46-26 record, followed by Arizona and the Dodgers 44-26.  These were the top 3 teams in the league and only Houston in the AL had a better record at 46-24.

The expectation was that the race was going to be a battle to the end. But the baseball Gods had different plans as the Dodgers would go on a 47-10 tear en route to winning the Division by 11 games.   The Rockies and D-Backs would have a race for Wild Card positioning for the next two months, until the D-Backs took 5 of 7 from the Rockies in September.

This year, on June 28th, it looked like the D-Backs were in the driver's seat with a 4 game lead over the Dodgers 6 over the Giants and 8 over the Rockies.  Since then the Rockies have gone 28-16 all against teams at or above .500 at the time of playing them.  Meanwhile the Dodgers have gone 23-21 while the Arizona is 21-21 since June 28th.

It could turn out one of the teams could get hot and run away with the division again this year.  For the Rockies it may come down to the 21 day stretch from September 3rd-23rd where they play the Giants, Dodgers and D-Backs in Home and away series for a 19 game stretch.  The D-Backs have 17 games scattered against the other 3 teams from August 27th to September 26th, the Dodgers have 16 games from August 30th through the end of the season and the Giants only have 12 games against the other 3 from August 27th to the end of the season.  They also have 18 games left with teams below .500.

You may notice that I don't talk about the Wild Card slots much. My philosophy is that your eye should be on the big prize--the division title and a guaranteed series in the first round.  Once you are eliminated from that title or fall far out of the race then you concentrate on the consolation prize.  The other part of it is that the wild card chase will change considerably as the other divisions play primarily themselves during the home stretch, so even though there are 11 teams playing for the five spots, since all three division races are still unsettled, the wild card slots may run parallel to the division races.   In other words, if you stay on the heels in the division, you will probably be in a spot to be in a wild card slot as a consolation, if you don't ultimately win the division.

Win the Division.