MLB:  Ascents & Turnabouts; Colorado Rockies.

(For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team, milehighsports.com.  .  .  SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner).

MLB   ---   IT’s Spring, in baseball spring forward, spring back, lots of good, bad and downright nasty shifts that can occur in just two days. On Wednesday, the then 6-2 Texas Rangers were leading the American League and the AL’s West Division, today it’s the 8-2 Oakland Athletics. Also on Wednesday, the then 5-3 Kansas City Royals led the AL’s Central Division two games up on the Chicago White Sox, but now the 4-5 White Sox are third behind the 5-4 Detroit Tigers, the latter only one game behind the Royals.

Two days ago, the then 5-2 Boston Red Sox led the AL’s East Division, with the 4-4 New York Yankees directly behind, but today the 5-4 Baltimore Orioles are the AL East’s number one team, the Red Sox second, Yankees third.

Wednesday also saw the then 7-1 Atlanta Braves leading the National League plus the NL’s East Division, a single game atop the Washington Nationals, and all that’s changes is that the Braves are now 8-1, the Nationals 7-2.

Nor have the NL’s Central Division teams shifted, the 5-4 Cincinnati Reds still ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals as the division’s leading team.

However, the NL’s West Division 7-3 San Francisco Giants jumped from third to first after a three-game sweep over Wednesday’s NL West second place team, the now 5-4 Colorado Rockies, the latter sinking to fourth in the division.

And, of the six ball clubs in last place of their respective divisions on Wednesday, only the AL West’s Houston Astros ascended, now at 3-6 and fourth from the bottom within the AL West, ahead of last place team, the 2-7 Los Angeles Angels, currently the AL’s worst club, a game up on the NL’s worst, the 1-8 Miami Marlins.

The only surprising success story to date in the MLB season are the 4-5 Chicago Cubs, last year’s third worst MLB franchise, finishing 61-101. The Cubs are now at third position, AL Central.

Of the 30 MLB clubs, only three have leap-ahead records after each has played 10 games so far---the AL’s Athletics, also the Braves and the Giants.

Yet at the heels of the above-cited three leading organizations are clubs that are but one game behind, which advises that expectations about any franchise holding up high throughout April and into the summer should stay somewhere between low and low-moderate.

Colorado Rockies --- Broomed! Ugh, three games lost sequentially to division rival, the now 7-3 San Francisco Giants, surely a volcanic eruption for the curretly 5-4 Rockies after being .625 on Wednesday, now .556. The team went from NL West second to fourth in just 48 hours. The last of the three losses to San Francisco being 10-0, it probably has had players, managers, coaches and front office thinking, “Shame on us!”

We can go all pop-philosophy, get into self-help mode and say, “There are no losses, only lessons,” which is baby aspirin compared to the kickass, “You’ve got to regroup, get your act together, and pronto!”

To keep from having to say “There’s no crying in baseball,” it could be that an overarching lesson for the Rockies now is to look a few streets away from Coors Field to Pepsi Center, where the NBA’s Denver Nuggets are making history; they’ll be third seed during the NBA playoffs, which starts April 20. The Nuggets are now 54-24, third best inside the NBA’s Western Conference, behind the San Antonio Spurs and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Rockies, here’s the lesson: “At the start of the current NBA year, the Nuggets lost seven games in a row---four in the pre-season, followed by  three in the regular season, four of these defeats quite devastating, the Nuggets having lost them by 10 and more points per.” Since January 1, 2013, the Nuggets won six straight, then nine straight, soon after 15 straight, and they've won their last five. 

Our guess here is that the three games lost by the Rockies to the Giants can be the year’s team exception. Like those Nuggets losses in October/November, 2012, they can be a lost baseball series with kinks that can be smoothed away providing that any panic being felt now by Rockies owner, GM and manager is kept from unnecessary position/pitching rotation + relief changes. The Rockies are still a .500+ team, only two games behind the NL West’s leading club, the Giants, a game behind second and third place teams, respectively the L.A. Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Besides, in 2012 several MLB teams that finished the regular season well above .500 had experienced one or more incredibly humiliating losses, the 2012 World Series winning Giants among them. Also, even the best teams in the majors lose more than 60 games a year, which is more than one third of a season’s scheduled competitions. Last season, the Washington Nationals led both MLB leagues with 98 wins, but the Nat's lost 64.

So, the Rockies will lose again, so will the Giants lose games in April and afterward. How defeat is handled and minimized is therefore more than a third of professional American baseball, and it’s what the Rockies manager, Walt Weiss, his staff and, of course, players need to be thinking about today, “building on strengths, and turning vulnerabilities into strengths,” right now personnel and player throwaways being the easiest but least productive tactic available.

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