@MarkKnudson41
It was most definitely great news at 20th and Blake when Major League Baseball announced that the playoff field in each league was being increased from five teams to six. The addition of another wild card spot gave immediate hope to teams like the Colorado Rockies – who aren’t quite ready to compete with the likes of the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants within their own division – for automatic entry into the postseason.
Most pundits agreed that the newly created extra wild card spot could be nabbed by a team that was just slightly north of the .500 mark when the season ended.
The question then became simple. “What do the 2022 Rockies need to do to get to say, 83 wins and sneak back into the playoff for the first time since 2018?”
The answer was really just as simple: Beat up on the bad teams that make up half the schedule.
It’s no secret that the Rockies were/are going to have a hard time with the Dodgers and Giants. And now that the San Diego Padres appear to have righted their ship too, the NL West is a meat grinder. Playing .500 ball against those teams – which make up 57 of your 162 games – wasn’t (and isn’t) going to happen. Winning between 20 and 25 of those contests would be a huge victory over the course of the season. (So far, Colorado is 3-6 against LA and SF, and hasn’t played the Padres yet.) Winning fewer than 20 is a very real possibility.
These Rockies were going to have to make their hay against teams like Arizona, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Miami, and the Cubs…and against interleague foes like Minnesota, Texas and Cleveland.
Most of those results aren’t final yet of course, but the ones that have already been played do not bode well for Colorado’s playoff chances.
In the first two months of the season, the Rockies have played sub-.500 baseball against teams that aren’t going to be playing meaningful games in September. On their most recent road trip, Colorado went 2-5 against Pittsburgh and Washington. Those are teams a playoff team would have gone 5-2 against, regardless of location. Overall, the Rockies lost 20 of their first 41 games against non-contenders.
It’s not just that the record is subpar, it’s the fact that they don’t get to play the Nationals again, and only have three games left with Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Miami and the Cubs. They’ve got two remaining against Texas (whom they did beat twice at the start of the season) and three against Cleveland and Minnesota, too.
The Rockies are 2-1 against the Dodgers (which is likely the last time they’ll be on the plus side of that ledger), 1-5 vs San Francisco, and 1-2 against the Eastern Division leading New York Mets (and they still have four games in the Big Apple to play.) They’ve yet to play the Padres, Central leading Milwaukee or St. Louis. That’s and additional 17 more very difficult tilts ahead.
So in a nutshell, the majority of the less daunting part of the schedule is behind them, with the bulk of their games against the best teams in the NL still to play.
So…Wait ‘till next year.
The Rockies brass are fully aware of all this of course. So knowing that this year is about building for the future, how long will it be before they start bringing up young prospects and even making trades?
Reason to watch…with an eye on next season and beyond.
Be sure to catch Mark Knudson and Manny Randhawa on the Park Adjusted Rockies Podcast each week, available on all major Podcast platforms.