MLB:  Not an easy season for either league; the Colorado Rockies & hitting bottom  // NBA: Heat & Thunder, Game 5.  

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

MLB:   For most of the major league clubs this year, there are 18 games before the All Star break, when more than half of a baseball season will be over, each club having played 70+ games. But compared with many past seasons, the American League and the National League are today below the margin, in that only three franchises of the 32 that comprise the leagues have averages above .600. From the American League, it’s the Texas Rangers (.614 from a 43/27 record) and the New York Yankees, (.603, from 41/27). From the National League, it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers (.618, re. 42/26), which implies that the Dodgers are the better team in professional baseball today, now leading the NL and the NL-West. The Texas Rangers are leading the AL-West, five games ahead of the L.A. Angels. The Yankees are leading the AL-East, two ahead of the Baltimore Orioles.

Meanwhile, 13 MLB teams are below .500, and of these are three teams under .400. The lowest and so last in both leagues, are the San Diego Padres (.343, from 24/46), just behind the Chicago Cubs (.348, re. 24/45). Third from the bottom, we have the Colorado Rockies (.373, 25/42). The Padres and the Rockies are of the NL-West, the Cubs of the NL-Central. As for a last place AL team, it’s the Minnesota Twins, at .403, from a 27/40 record. If we go by these numbers, the AL is the superior league, and were it not that the NL-West’s Dodgers and San Francisco Giants have been among the top three teams in the NL, the NL-West would be listed as the worst division in baseball today.

The NL-West’s fourth and last place teams are the Rockies and the Padres, respectively and one game apart. The Rockies have been lowered there by a poor starting rotation, and they are playing without superb shortstop and heavy hitter, Troy Tulowitzki. It could be eight weeks before Tulowitzki is afield again. Without Tulowitzki, the Rockies offense isn’t the sort that can reach levels high enough to compensate for the above 6.0 ERA that the team’s rotation keeps flashing. It’s a rotation that’s essentially hurlers that can’t prevent mediocrity from gaining on them after three or four innings, and the Rockies haven’t enough good relievers to offset the damage.

Up ahead for the Rockies, a team that’s lost 12 of its last 13 challenges, are three games versus the Rangers, followed by four vs. the Washington Nationals, the latter now leading the NL-East at .591 from 39/27, currently the only NL team close to joining the .600 gang. Also, the Nationals have been holding second place in the NL behind the Dodgers. One might think, then, that the person who wrote the schedule for Colorado baseball hates skiing, mountain-climbing and John Denver lyrics, for the upcoming Rockies games vs. the Rangers and the Nationals are that nightmare that many a club manager has had, the manager’s low-ranking team being challenged by two of baseball’s top franchises.

Losing the seven games could put the Rockies behind the Padres, making the Rockies last in the NL. On the other hand, the Rockies took a series away from the Dodgers in the first week of this month, and the Rockies have maintained the best interleague record of any other NL or AL team since 2006, which has included wins against AL teams of every caliber. Winning four or five of the upcoming seven, or losing four gallantly, could paint the Rockies as that engine that could, proving what is really so in spite of what the numbers say, that the Rockies are a team that belongs in the MLB and that can fire up and will do so once the team’s young pitching staff can rise above the margin under the alterations that are being made, among the fixes a four-man rotation and going to the bull pen earlier than that usual fifth or sixth inning change of hurlers.

NBA:   From an amazing leap-ahead third quarter, and a fourth quarter grip on a huge edge in points, the Miami Heat put the Thunder asunder in game five of the year’s NBA championship go-round, 121-106, defeating the Oklahoma City team four games to one, becoming an NBA championship team for the second time in franchise history, doing so in ways unexpected, not as only the three bigs LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh dominating, but as a team of five+, Mario Chalmers a great shooter and defender in game four, Mike Miller a super shooter in game five (seven three-pointers, one below the NBA Finals record held by Boston’s Ray Allen). And, it wasn’t James as the game’s MVP because he’s a gifted shooter (28 ppg for the 2012 finals); it’s been James the rebounder, James the passer, James as master of the assist, all that hardwood selfishness that he’s been accused of gone!

Observers could comment safely that the Heat quieted the Thunder by often playing the way that the Thunder got to the year’s NBA Finals, with more teamwork than star power, even with the Thunder’s Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook driving and scoring high when opportunities to do so existed. Heat teamwork dominated, especially in game five, during which four of the team’s athletes finished with high double-digit points.

Wrap-up: the Thunder took game one, 105-94; the Heat won game two, 100-96, game three, 91-85, game four, 104-98, game five, 121-106. Across the five games, the Heat put up 510 points, the Thunder, 490, the Heat ahead by 20, a clean edge leaving no doubt as to which team deserved the NBA Finals trophy.      

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