Colorado Rockies: The NL West Kingmaker for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants

The Colorado Rockies hold the keys to the NL West crown.

This week they face not only the Los Angeles Dodgers but the San Francisco Giants as well. The Dodgers and Giants are only one game apart for the NL West title and both teams will watch these series intently. Both cheering for and against the Rockies at various points throughout the week.

The Rockies are the Kingmakers of the NL West (this article was partially inspired by u/AVJormur on the Colorado Rockies subreddit). So when else in the club’s history have they been key to the division crown?

The Colorado Rockies have impacted races with the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, and Atlanta Braves.

First, we need to define a kingmaker season and how the Colorado Rockies are involved with it.

My definition of a potential NL West kingmaker season is simple: the 1st and 2nd place teams must have ended up no greater than 3 games apart. For the Rockies, specifically, to be named kingmakers, they must have played both the 1st and 2nd place finishers in the Division AND they must have made a significant difference in the GB ultimate division champs direction.

Since 1993, the NL West has had 13 potential “kingmaker” seasons, with the Colorado Rockies acting as the potential kingmaker in eight of them.

With that in mind, how many of them did the Rockies actually act as Kingmakers of the division? 5 of them, including all 4 times that the team has finished 2nd in its history (1995, 2007, 2009, 2018). Each time handing themselves their own losses. Naturally, if you are close in the race, multiple kingmakers arise, but the ultimate one is yourself, especially if you play the team you are vying for the title with. If you don’t want to count those seasons, then the Rockies have only acted as kingmakers involving two other teams in one other season. It was their inaugural season: 1993.

During that 1st season, the newly formed Colorado Rockies helped hand the NL West title to the Atlanta Braves, who were in their final year in the NL West, over the San Francisco Giants. The Braves swept them and split the series with the Giants in the final week of the season. That one loss to the Rockies would become the difference between the Giants and the NL West crown.

In 1994, MLB adopted the Wild Card and with the Wild Card, they adopted the Central division as well. The Atlanta Braves were moved from the NL West to the NL East (where they geographically should have been in the first place).

So, for the first time in 28 years, the Colorado Rockies hold the keys to someone else’s castle. It’s ironic that the team with both the least division wins blocks the way to the crown. This team has been surprisingly fun to watch this season. What a way to keep it interesting right until the end.

Colorado Rockies: The kingmaker of the NL West for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.

Data for this article was found using Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet