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Take Away One Losing Streak And The Colorado Rockies Are… Good?

By Bobby DeMuro

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Jun 6, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; The Colorado Rockies players celebrate after their game against the Miami Marlins at Coors Field. The Rockies won 10-5. Mandatory Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

The Colorado Rockies are 27-31 entering play on Thursday evening, and if you take away their 11-game losing streak earlier this year, the club might be… pretty good?

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Baseball is pretty weird. Teams are streaky, and no one knows this better than Colorado Rockies fans (remember 2007?). Clubs get hot, cold, whatever, but after 162 games of it, clubs become the true representation of what they really are because of the large sample size.

So when the Rockies sit at 27-31 entering play on Thursday, the record is better than the more pessimistic Rockies fans thought, but not yet indicative of what the club actually will become this year.

The 27-31 record is weird for one other reason, too; the Rockies have already suffered an 11-game losing streak. If you take away that streak, the Rockies are 27-20 (.574), having just taken a series from the best team in baseball. That’s a winning percentage and a mid-week series victory that good teams do, right? (And, oh yeah, something the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers couldn’t do.)

And that’s what I can’t figure out about this team, that has now won 12 of its last 18 games including five of six on their most recent road trip before Miami this weekend. Which Rockies team is the “real” one? The 0-11 end-of-April-start-of-May abomination? The 12-6 recent version benefitting from arms like Chad Bettis, David Hale, Chris Rusin, and the rapidly improving Jorge De La Rosa?

As with all things in this world, the answer is in between those two extremes. But in between an 0-11 stretch and a 12-6 stretch is much closer to .500 than I — and let’s be honest, most of you — gave this club credit for before the season (for the record, I picked the Rockies to win 75 games this year, and I thought I was being wildly optimistic at the time).

We got our first inkling the Rockies’ front office might imagine themselves better than what the sports “experts” assumed, too, when Eddie Butler was sent down to AAA Albuquerque.

Butler told the Denver Post:

"“They’re were talking to me about wanting me back up here to make a push for the playoffs. ‘Once you get that figured out, you’ll be the first guy in the rotation to get back up here.’ I need to work on some consistency with my off-speed. I need to get guys off my fastball.”"

Playoffs?! That sounds… unlikely… but it gives you an idea of what the club is thinking. Obviously, the front office believes the Rockies have the personnel to make something of this season. I’ll argue the Rockies are certainly not a playoff team, but if this club is more 12-6-in-their-last-18-games and less eleven-game-losing-streak-disaster the rest of the way, they’ve got a shot to be pretty decent.

The Rox will hit another skid this year, though hopefully it won’t be eleven games. They’ll also get hot again later this summer, and ride that as long as they can, too. What the club needs to do if they want to be better than we’ve all assumed is minimize the cold stretches, and try to string together the hot streaks as long and as much as possible. Imagine that, eh?

You should feel pretty good about these Colorado Rockies sitting at 27-31, having just taken two of three games from the best team in baseball. I’d argue the club is a little bit better than their record, and overcoming their early season disaster stretch so strongly bodes well for the rest of the way.

Playoffs? Nah. But flirting with a .500 record? Hey, for a team that we — and many of you — picked to lose somewhere around 90 games, getting nearly 80 wins this year would be impressive.

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