Colorado Rockies: Should we fear the June Swoon?

All Colorado Rockies fans know June as the time when the Rockies crumble like a stale hot-dog bun. It’s a phenomenon known as the “June Swoon,” famous for killing big dreams of a division title, or even a playoff run.

But is the Swoon real, or just standard mid-season struggles of a Major League Baseball team?

Looking at records alone, the Rockies don’t perform distinctly better or worse in the month of June compared to their overall record that season. I crunched the numbers, and in only two seasons (out of 25), the difference between the Rockies’ June winning percentage and overall winning percentage that season was greater than 0.100 percentage points. Those years were 2014 (we’ll get to that later) and 2009, which was actually a June Boom: The Rockies went 21-7 (a 0.750 winning percentage), helping propel the franchise to a record 92 wins.

Basically, the June Rockies play baseball like the Rockies during the rest of the season. But there still must be a reason why fans maintain the expectation of a June Swoon.

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So far, we’re just looking at the basic win-loss record for the entire month; that doesn’t tell us the whole story. The perception of a June Swoon is a function of the Rockies’ knack for devastating stretches of games in the month of June. It just takes one elongated losing streak for June Swoon to start trending on Twitter.

Go no further than last season. There was no talk of a June Swoon after Nolan Arenado’s walk-off cycle on June 18; the team was 13-4 in June after that game. But following one more victory, the Rockies swooned hard, enduring an ugly eight-game losing streak to divisional opponents where they gave up 66 runs. This included the Adam Ottavino nightmare game.

The 2007 Rockies followed a similar trajectory, starting the month off well before falling into an eight-game losing streak in the back half of the month. A lot of these were tight losses resulting from uncharacteristically bad pitching by Brian Fuentes. However, at the time the Rockies weren’t considered a playoff threat, and it took a famous second-half surge to bring Rocktober madness to Denver.

June of 2014 was the worst June in Rockies history. The squad went 8-20 (0.286 winning percentage) and their slim playoff hopes evaporated. After an encouraging five-game win streak in mid-June, they went 2-12 to finish the month. Now that’s a June Swoon.

In reality, by the time June come around, teams have played enough games and divisions begin sorting themselves out (of course, there’s currently a huge exception: five out of six MLB divisions have two teams within a game of the division lead, including the Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West). For most Rockies teams, that’s often meant an unceremonious end to playoff dreams.

Next: Three options for Bryan Shaw and his current struggles

But while extended losing streaks trick us into thinking the June Swoon is a real phenomenon, the team’s overall performance throughout the month suggests the Rockies are not uniquely awful in the month of June.