There's No Denying Rockies Have Been Lucky

Now that the Colorado Rockies are the National League champions — having won 21 of 22 games, many of them against the toughest competition the league had to offer — I take it that those among us who were unimpressed by them as October began are supposed to become suddenly deferential, finding great glories in the team's virtuous play and heroism, and lauding general manager Dan O'Dowd as a neglected genius.

This is bosh. One doesn't need to deny any credit to the Rockies for their spectacular play of late to acknowledge that the team is a fluke, no more or less impressive now that they're 8–0 in playoffs and play-ins than they were before.

This may seem churlish, but it's what the facts demand. A brief review of the Rockies' luck over the last few weeks may be in order. First, it took two of the most horrible collapses in history for them to reach their wild-card play-in with the San Diego Padres. Had the Mets, for instance, won two of the 43 games they lost against the bottom-feeding Florida Marlins and Washington Nationals in September, the Rockies would not be playing right now. Had the Padres won one of the three games they lost to the Rockies by two or fewer runs in September, they would have made the playoffs. There are many counterfactuals one can propose to make the point. But the Rockies needed not just to do everything right down the stretch, but they also needed their competitors to do everything wrong.

Second, look at the scores. Of their last eight wins, four have been by margins of two runs, or one. The most important win — their do-or-die game against the Padres — was decided by a flatly blown call. Again, it should go without saying, all credit to the Rockies for winning — but these games were the kind decided by a random slice of the ball here and a bit of shortstop positioning there. With their deep bullpen and impressive, quick defense — anchored by Todd Helton, who's never really been given credit for his marvelous play at first — the Rockies are well suited to win these kinds of games. But they've also been very lucky.

Third, the grandeur of the Rockies' achievements is probably being blown a bit out of proportion. Winning eight straight games against the best teams in the league is incredibly impressive — but there were 35 eight-game winning streaks in baseball last year. Is the difference between October and the rest of the year really so big that a fairly common winning streak becomes a singular event? The Rockies have gone 21–1, and needed to win most of those games. Again, this is enormously impressive, something that will define these players for the rest of their careers. Last year's Minnesota Twins, though, who won their division by a game, won 20 of 22 at one point in the year. Have you heard much about them lately?

Because the point of baseball is to win, victory, no matter how it's achieved, usually ends up casting a kind of magic spell over winning teams, and here it has again. The sameness of the Rockies' rotation — a collection of no. 3 and 4 starters — was seen as mediocrity just weeks ago; now it is a stalwart line of men made of brick. The blurry vagueness of the team's players has even become a strength, proof of their subordination to the team concept.

Had the last call of the regular season not been blown, and had the Padres gone on to win the game by a run, Helton would be thought of now much as he was as of the end of August — as a possible Hall of Famer whose career was a bit tainted by the fact that his team had never done anything at all. But Helton is now, to read his clippings, the Patton-like leader of a team of young players whom he single-handedly taught how to win. O'Dowd — previously regarded as the genial buffoon who agreed to pay Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle approximately $400 million a year to pitch in Denver — was transformed by that call into the shrewdest judge of young talent since Branch Rickey, a master strategist who conquered altitude.

The very unlikeliness of the Rockies' success, though, doesn't make it stronger evidence that this really is a great team. As success becomes more improbable, and as it's sustained by more and more spectacular luck, the team still remains the same team it was in August, with no more or less character or ability than it had before it went on a rampage. What changed were the Rockies' circumstances, which suddenly endowed the team with all sorts of unappreciated virtues — much as a sudden bequest of millions of dollars from an admirer would suddenly find me endowed with all sorts of wit and wisdom no one had previously noticed. Good on the Rockies for taking advantage of their opportunities; their pennant comes with no asterisk. Even wins, though, don't make you something other than what you are.

tmarchman@nysun.com