NFL: Broncos vs. Raiders; Week Four’s possible yields // MLB: Colorado Rockies & “the Slide.”

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” will continue to post its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

NFL:   NO NFL team wants to begin Week Five of the NFL season as a below .500 franchise, and so the Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders, both at 1-2, will enter their Week Four match-up with that clearly in mind, thus with some quiet desperation about avoiding problems encountered during earlier games. If we go by the numbers, then the Raiders 61 points accrued from its three games being less than the Broncos 77 suggests that Denver could beat Oakland by more than a touchdown, but an injured Denver running back, Willis McGahee, could reduce that value for the Broncos, as could the fact that in the two Broncos losses to date an unusually large number of incomplete QB Peyton Manning passes occurred, along with what could have been a greater number of rushes had possessions not been lost to interceptions---the Broncos have proven that they can achieve more than three yards per rush, and so those intercepted Manning passes could be blamed for the Broncos losses thus far.

And if we go by QB comparisons, we can see what could be a very close set-up, in that both Manning and Raiders QB, Carson Palmer, have achieved the same number of TD’s to date, “five,” and they are nearly equal when it comes to pass completion percentage, Manning at 60 percent, Palmer at 62 percent. This advises that “the pass rush” could make the difference for either team on Sunday, the Broncos linemen Elvis Dumervil and Von Miller an advantage as masters of the sack.

So, if Manning has the right protection in the pocket, then the pass-synchronicity, that is, the correct timing that he and his receivers could share, such will make a positive difference for the Broncos, and this has to include other than Broncos wide receiver, Eric Decker. For red zone occupation, Manning needs a greater number of options from his offense, including receivers tagged for the rushes that will have to be more than three yards per.

The conservative guesses have been that the Broncos will prevail over the Raiders but not by much, as long as the team avoids the one or two errors that turn a game over, like an interception or fumble. It’s likely that we will see a Denver offense struggling hard to overcome points given away by a Denver defense that isn’t many pegs above that of the Raiders when it comes to skills, speed and power, but a Broncos offense that can get the job done.

Round-up ---  An unusual number of NFL teams above .500 will be playing teams below .500, among them, the 3-0 Houston Texans challenging the 1-2 Tennessee Titans, the 3-0 Arizona Cardinals playing against the 1-2 Dolphins, the 3-0 Atlanta Falcons against the 1-2 Carolina Panthers. This Sunday, there will also be many equally numbered match-ups, like the 1-2 Raiders vs. the 1-2 Broncos, the 1-2 Washington Redskins vs. the 1-2 Tampa Buccaneers, the 2-1 San Francisco 49ers vs. the 2-1 New York Jets, the 2-1 Chicago Bears against the 2-1 Dallas Cowboys, the 2-1 N.Y. Giants vs. the 2-1 Philadelphia Eagles. It is from these games that the status quo will see Week Five begin with a new array of .500 and above franchises, with the teams now 3-0 possibly still leading the two conferences. Of course, Week Four will include desperate tries to escape “the zero club,” e.g., the 0-3 New Orleans Saints pushing to have that start-up win as they face the 1-2 Green Bay Packers.  .  .  On Thursday, Week Four’s up or down yields began with the Baltimore Ravens beating the Cleveland Browns, 23-16, lifting the Ravens to a 3-1 record, pushing the Browns rearward, 0-4.     

MLB:     THE Colorado Rockies September ballad went quickly from high notes to screeching lows, starting with two wins against the San Diego Padres, which followed a series won from the Los Angeles Dodgers that had capped a winning August 2012 record, the only winning month for the Rockies all season.

From September 3 on, the Rockies experienced a slide that included 17 losses.

By Wednesday night of this week, September 27, the Rockies September drops had brought the franchise’s total number for the year to (ugh!) 94.

With only seven matches left to play, the Denver-based team was prepped to be the second MLB club to lose 100 games during the 2012 season, a feat reached recently by the far below .400 Houston Astros.

And losing the fourth game of a series vs. the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday, September 24, would have been high end humility for the Rockies, a feared division rival’s four-game sweep. During game one against the Arizona franchise, held earlier (Friday, September 21), the Diamondbacks exploded in early innings with numerous runs, while the Rockies imploded, final score, 15-5, Arizona. Games two and three vs. the Diamondbacks saw the Rockies again in fallback mode, losing 7-8 and 7-10.

Fortunately, game four would be different, the Rockies taking the Diamondbacks down, 4-2, an upswing in Rockies winnings to follow.

Next up for the Rockies were the Chicago Cubs, one of two MLB teams with a win/loss record beneath that of the Colorado team. The first two games of the Rockies/Cubs series were won by the Rockies, 10-5 and 6-0. Then, on Thursday, the Rockies played their last home game “and won,” the third in its series vs. Chicago, final score: 7-5. That’s four victories in a row---yet the six games left for the Rockies to play (three vs. the Dodgers, three against the Diamondbacks), they could still leave the team at 100 dumped.

There will be lots of queries as to why the Rockies have journeyed from being an above-the-margin ball club in early April to a team with the third worst 2012 win/loss record in the majors, perhaps the most confusing aspect of the mystery being that the Rockies are not by any standard a gathering of really bad ballplayers. Fact: several of the Rockies are within ranks of the season’s best, among them, catcher, Wiln Rosario, he has the second best 2012 rookie home run record in the majors today, 27, only one HR behind the year’s rookie phenom, Mike Trout of the L.A. Angels. Rosario also holds the second highest slugging percentage for a rookie catcher in all of baseball history, .540, behind Mike Piazza’s .561. Too, outfielder Dexter Fowler and shortstop Josh Rutledge have been super lead-off hitters for the Rockies, batting above .300. Moreover, closer Rafael Betancourt has had 31 saves, including last night’s vs. Cubs game.

In other words, the known few answers among the likely many regarding the Rockies spiraling, slipping and sliding into the pits lies somewhere other than across the full range of achievements of the team’s starting players.

On the dark side, a turn of injuries has had Rockies hitters Troy Tulowitzki, Todd Helton, Carlos Gonzalez, Dexter Fowler and others placed on disabled lists. Among pitchers, the season has seen effective pitchers Jorge De La Rosa and Jhoulys Chacin temporarily disabled. By mid-season, the Rockies players were a new team every few weeks, barely adjusted to working together.

Also, 2012 starting pitcher expectations based on previous performance stats rarely actualized for the Rockies, and all starting hurlers were restricted to a four-game rotation and a 70-75 pitch limit in hope they’d escalate to execution of more strikeouts, a method that has had partial success.  

On a brighter side, from April through September 27, the Rockies accrued a total of around 740 runs from all of its games, while the teams that the Rockies played in that period totaled around 850. The differential is less than 112 runs, below that of a team average reflecting the loss of each of a season’s 162 games by only one run per. An argument can be made that this is meaningless “moneyballing,” but if the total number of runs achieved in a season by an MLB team happened to be the very basis for deciding if a team isa winning club, i.e., above .500, the Rockies would be in the top fold, somewhere between .800 and .850.

And, though in last place of the NL West Division, the Rockies current team batting average is higher than it was in 2007, when the Rockies won the National League championship and went to the World Series, .304 vs. 2007’s .298.

Baseball’s prismatic, and so there are different ways to judge a ballclub. From many vantage points, the Rockies are far from being the limp organization that the standings indicate. It’s quite possible that what is there isn’t the larger problem, and that the slips and slides that the Rockies have experienced have been mostly from what is “not there,” from what has been absent. The Rockies are a team that can lose big---having lost to double-digit runs in many cases, and yet the Rockies have won in 2012 via double-digit figures in 10 games vs. several above .500 teams, e.g., in April they beat the San Francisco Giants 17-8, and in June they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers, 13-3. But way too often, the 2012 Rockies have been a team losing a substantial lead, or going in the hole in early innings and recovering well but not well enough.

In addition to probably a lot that hasn’t been discovered through analysis yet, obviously missing from the Rockies are enough starting pitchers and relievers that can suppress opposing team hitters in order to deny successive runs, and surely needed is another middle- and back-of-the-order clean-up hitter for those RBI’s that lock in a ninth inning victory, let’s say, a Tulowitzki or Helton of past seasons, which Rosario and a few other Rockies players seem to be growing into .  .  .  maybe the better way to summarize here is to say that the Rockies need to maintain as would “diamonds in the rough,” and also add to its value-added means, not have many values taken away, the latter a risky solution adopted way too often after a team has a poor end-of-season win/loss record.

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