At the beginning of a season, if you're a team that feels contention worthy, you can look at the schedule and mentally chalk up where each of your 90, 95 or 100 wins might come from. Say you had six games against the Orioles? You'd expect to go no worse than 4-2 and hope to go 5-1. 19 against the bottom team in your own division? You better hope for a 12-7 mark. If you fail to reach these standards for any given team, you jeopardize he sum win total you're expecting at the end of the season, unless you make up that ground against other contenders who you have less expectations with.
So we enter the last fifty games or so with the Rockies losing a seven game season series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Depending on the outcome of this afternoon's contest, the expected win deficit will be at least two games, possibly three. While it would have been nice if the Rockies won the games they "were supposed to win" to quote Jason Giambi from the Troy Renck column today, they didn't. Where and if the team makes up those losses will now determine whether the Rockies make their comeback this year. Whether it's in the 10 games remaining against St. Louis and San Diego, both winning teams which the Rockies have a head start on with a combined 11-4 record thus far, or the Braves, Reds, Giants or Dodgers, it doesn't matter, the Rockies have to now perform better than expected against the NL's elite because of the hole they've dug themselves against the league's bottom feeders.
Only a few links this morning as I'm having to blog in public and my computer's bugged:
- Broken wrist leads to lessons for Tulowitzki | ColoradoRockies.com: News -After missing 33 games with a fractured left wrist, Troy Tulowitzki returned knowing he wasn't healed enough to push for power. So he has concentrated on a controlled swing.
- Pirates' 10th-inning three-run blow decks Rockies - The Denver Post
- Moss: Reynolds ready for call - The Denver Post - Matt Reynolds, that is. At the very latest we'll see him in September, and look for him to replace either Joe Beimel or Randy Flores as a full time member of the bullpen next season.
- "More mature" Carlos Gonzalez rises to MVP candidate - The Denver Post
- Renck: Rox fueled by terrific trio - The Denver Post
- And finally: Slugger Bichette Jr. will have a big decision between MLB and UGA - Dante's kid will be eligible for the draft next season, depe