BASEBALL: MLB Standings; Colorado Rockies // World Tennis (Our NBA playoff coverage will continue when finalists face off, Game One).
For more analysis, go to Mile High Sports Radio AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver
MLB --- AS of today, three franchises are leading the MLB in number of games won, the St. Louis Cardinals, Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees, each with 24 victories. Eleven other teams have accrued 20 or more wins. Least in having wins are the Houston Astros and the Miami Marlins, 10 and 11 respectively. Next from the bottom are the N.Y. Mets with 14 wins, then the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs and the Toronto Blue Jays, each with 15.
The differentials between winners and losers within the 30 clubs of the MLB can appear wide. Today, five clubs are above .600 regarding percentage of wins over losses but 13 are below .500, seven of which are beneath or barely above .400, the worst flashpoint being the American League West, where only one of five teams is above .500, the Rangers, a team that at .649 leads the AL. Atop the National League are the Cardinals, also .649.
The Rangers are currently the only division breakaway franchise, leading the AL West by five games above number two team, the 19-20/.487 Oakland Athletics. None of the other division leading clubs has a greater than two game lead over the team directly behind.
And within the MLB’s six divisions, four third place clubs are only three games behind first place teams. Only two races for division numero uno are quite close, inside the NL East it’s the 21-16 Atlanta Braves versus the 20-17 Washington Nationals, within the AL Central it’s the 21-15 Detroit Tigers vs. the 21-16 Cleveland Indians.
The above MLB numbers are, with other data, a lot to chew on, difficult to extract a final truth from, in that an almost equal amount of stats underscore both equality and inequality; there appears to be a lot of sameness to one side, with matters being quite different elsewhere, practically in equal measure.
At the surface, it could seem from the 13 clubs below .500 (half of which are under .400), and from 17 teams therefore being at or above .500 (within which are five hgher than .600) that there’s a high quotient of equality and fairness in baseball. The math tells us that when the 30 MLB teams compete as 15 versus 15, half will win, half will lose. But that’s not how it looks among divisions, where the NL West has a total of 95 wins, the NL Central, 99, the NL East, 84, and the AL West, 85, the AL Central, 93, the AL East, 103.
And, when you ignore division vs. division and just look at individual franchise records, more diversity appears, e.g, no more than five of the 30 MLB clubs have the identical number of wins. Looking deeper, i.e., at individual games, noted is that rarely are any two exactly the same, and from examination of the records of individual ballplayers we can see quickly that rarely are there a large number of them completing a season with identical numbers.
So, if you are the MLB’s Commissioner looking at the entire "enchilada" from a lofty posiiton without going deep, you could see balance, a league divided almost in half among winners and losers. To you, the map will suggest uniformity, unity. However, drop below to teams, managers and players and that old saw about baseball being extremely unfair will seem to prevail, it’s where diversity and the unexpected will reign supreme, and that is a good thing, reducing predictability to a minimum, maintaining one of sports greater gifts---suspense, when it’s not over until it’s over, when we can’t prove beforehand how anything will really turn out.
Fourteen of the Rockies 18 losses have occurred within the team’s last 21 games, five within the club’s last six. The MLB season is now around seven weeks in. If the Rockies continue to have the same win/loss ratio that it’s had for the 38 games already played, they will finish the 2013 season barely above .500, but if they continue to play as they have during the past 21 games they could end up as they had last September, sixth from the bottom of both leagues, 64-98, way below .500.
Yet there exists a better Rockies team than that fielded in 2012. Comparisons reveal a much improved pitching staff. Winning or losing this year, few games have gone by without the Rockies hill, field and offense delivering some moments of more than just good baseball. Consistency at the plate is lacking, however, especially for RBI’s from extra-base hits and/or from home runs when there are two outs, possibly the hardest tactical vacancy to figure out in all sports and one of the more difficult to cure. Even when line-ups are reconstructed to maximize power for base-runners to round the horn and touch home, it doesn’t seem to be enough.
Last year, winning games relied upon Rockies batters to offset with hits + runs the Rockies weak pitching that kept giving up runs to opponents. It has appeared during the Rockies recent line-up slump, that Rockies starting hurlers have had the task of offsetting weaknesses in batting and they haven’t come through entirely, e.g., Jaun Nicasio unable to draw out his best vs. the Cubs.
Confusing is that the skills of individual Rockies players and the team’s win/loss ratio fail to match up, the former appearing far superior to the latter when you look at teh excellent batting averages, number of home runs and other achievements of outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, infielders Troy Tulowitzki and Todd Helton, pitchers Jorge De La Rosa and Jeff Francis, and catchers Wiln Rosario and Yorvit Torrealba. Up now and at home for the Rockies is a series vs. the San Francisco Giants, an opportunity for the Rockies to prove contention, that they can turn matters around. The data and observed skills advise that the above-cited Rockies players can contribute considerably to a series win over the Giants if the right match-ups pitcher-to-opposing batter can also exist.
World Tennis --- The world class/ATP tournaments that are more popular and more important than others for championship level players began in January with the Australian Open, won by Novak Djokovic. After numerous other but less known tournaments, the “Bigs” (2013) will return as follows:
French Open, (clay), Paris
Wimbledon, (grass), London , U.K.
U.S. Open, (Hard surface), N.Y.C., N.Y., August 26 – September 2
It’s our hope that you will stay with us for reports and analysis before, during and after these top showings.
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