We beat a divisional opponent
One win isn’t normally that much to get excited about. But here’s the deal: we’re terrible against the other teams in our division. Has been that way for several years. We’re 10-13 against our divisional rivals this season, and over the past six years, the only time we’ve had a winning record was 2004, when we went 39-37 largely due to a 13-6 record against the godawful (that year, anyway) Diamondbacks.
Granted, we haven’t been that good against anyone else; we’re 5-7 against teams outside the West this season, though we did have a (just barely) winning record against the rest of the league in 2006, going 45-42, buoyed by an 11-4 record in interleague play. But we’ve really got to solve the rest of our division if we’re ever going to contend for a wild card spot, or the division title for that matter.
Is the rest of the division really much better than us? Well, right now we’re just five games out of first place, so probably not. The Dodgers are 14-8 against the rest of the division, the Padres are 12-11, while the Diamondbacks and Giants are roughly our equals (10-12 and 11-13, respectively.) But that’s why this weekend’s series is big. We need to be beating teams like the Giants, and the Diamondbacks (who we play six games against in the next two weeks.) Then toward the end of the month we head to AT&T Park for a three-gamer with the Giants.
This stretch is also big because sandwiched in between all those games with the Diamondbacks and Giants is a three-game series at home against the Royals. Rockies, repeat after me: we have no business losing to the Royals. And we have no business doing anything other than bombarding Tim Lincecum tonight, who has good stuff but didn’t look so good in his major league debut against the Phillies. Hopefully he’ll hang a pitch to Matt Holliday the way he did to Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard.
Or, he’ll strike us out fourteen times like he did the Sky Sox a couple of weeks ago. Who knows?
The Coors Effect 