Mark Knudson’s Three Strikes Blog
THE ROCKIES MUST-WIN SERIES
By Mark Knudson @MarkKnudson41
There’s an old adage that says you can’t win a pennant in April, but you CAN lose it. The Colorado Rockies and the Los Angeles Dodgers will put that adage to the test during this home opening weekend.
The Rockies season opening 3-4 fizzle in Florida, plus the Dodgers quick 5-2 start has left the Rockies with an early-season must-win series against the club everyone in America has picked to win the division and be the likely National League entry in the World Series for the third straight season. Sure, starting the three-game series two games back isn’t a huge deficit…but if Colorado loses the series they would already be starring at a four or five game hole just 10 games in.
These Dodgers are not likely to go on any really long losing streaks. Lose contact with them early and it may be a repeat of 2017, when LA’s historic start made a mockery of the division race…even though both the Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks both qualified for the postseason as Wild Card teams.
In short, give these Dodgers a decent sized division lead and they ain’t giving it back.
That”s not the only thing about this series that”s important for the Rockies division title hopes. While they lost out on the division crown to LA by a single game a year ago, they can look at there 7-13 mark against Big Blue as big reason why. Play the Dodgers close to even, win he NL West.
The Rockies (and the rest of the division) will continue to play Little Brother to the big, bad Dodgers until somebody comes along to knock them off their perch. Big Brother has all the advantages and all the confidence. There’s only one way to change that. And it needs to start this weekend.
Disagree? Hit me up on Twitter @MarKnudson41
