Throughout this baseball season, there’s been a lot be excited about, especially if you’re a fan of the National League West. Over the next week, the fighting Colorado Rockies will be battling the hotly contested, best division in baseball trying to hold their spot atop the standings.
So far this season, only five teams in all of Major League Baseball hold records above .600 and three of them represent the NL West – Houston (48-24), Colorado (47-26), the Los Angeles Dodgers (46-26), Arizona (44-27) and Washington (43-29).
With the Diamondbacks in town for the first of two Rockies series in the next week, the near triple-digit temperatures won’t be the only hot thing in Denver over the next few days.
“It’s a really good division,” Rockies outfield Carlos Gonzalez said. “It’s never easy to win a division. You see the Giants and they way they’ve been this year, that tells you how special it is, that this division is. These three teams, including us, we’re playing really, really great, but we still got a lot of baseball ahead.”
For the Rockies this year, the strategy has revolved around taking it one inning at a time, and trying to win each at-bat, each defensive play.
While the Rockies are the second-best team in baseball behind the Astros and first in the National League, they can’t let their guard down for one second, with the Dodgers and Diamondbacks right on their heels day in and day out. That makes this home series, the upcoming road series in Los Angeles and the subsequent road test in Arizona extraordinarily important, for all three teams involved.
“It speaks volumes about how well the Rockies have been playing,” D-Backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “We’ve been winning games and not gaining ground, but we love that. We love the fact that we’re preparing ourselves for battles every single day, and I think that’s what we want to do to have a successful August and September. We want to be able to say that we’re battle-tested, so that’s the first thing that I think about, but credit to the three teams that are doing it on a daily basis.”
Since 1969, only three divisions in baseball have been this good, with the other two being the 1986 AL Central (Red Sox, Yankees and Orioles) and the NL Central in 2013 (Cardinals, Reds and Pirates). Although there’s still plenty of baseball left to be played, these upcoming series will be crucial, must-wins for the Rockies to better set up for the end of their season, heading into October.
“It’s huge. We’re playing a really good team that is only one game behind us. Especially as we’re playing the entire year, doing the same thing, we got to continue the grind,” Gonzalez said. “Whatever happens in the past, yesterday or the day before, is already over. We just got to go out there and compete today, trying to get wins, trying to win every pitch, trying to win every play and keeping going.
“We just got to keep moving forward, like I said, don’t get too excited. Of course we celebrate every win, but the next day’s another challenge and an opportunity, so that’s how we’ve been taking this process the entire year, just win series. Everything else will take care of itself.”
While the success of the division may surprise fans and national commentators alike, the key group in all of this always knew they had it in them.
“I’m not surprised by us, I’m surprised by them, you know what I mean?” All-Star third baseman Nolan Arenado said. “They’re right on us. I feel like we’re playing great ball, and they’re right there with us, that just shows how tough this division is, but we got great character in this locker room, and we have good players. That part is not a surprise. It’s crazy to see that this division and these three teams, we all have the best record in baseball for sure.”
