Start paying attention to the 1st-place Rockies

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The Rockies are 39-23 and in first place in the National League West. They’ve won five in a row, and if they make it six, that’ll be 40 wins — 40 is the number that comes after 39, yes. Thank you for allowing me to educate you on this. The Rockies won their 40th game of 2016 on July 9, and it put them at 40-47. So, yeah, they’ve made quite the turnaround since last summer.

They’re currently two games up in the NL West, compared to eight games back after their June 8 game in 2016. They’re 9-2 in one-run games, and that’s helping to bolster their record a little. But they’ve also outscored opponents by 62 runs and have managed to allow the fifth-fewest runs in the National League despite that whole “playing in the most hitter-friendly park in Major League Baseball” thing.

This isn’t some fluke occurrence, either. They have some lineup issues that their home park helps mask on the surface, but they also have Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, and the actually-good-at-baseball version of Mark Reynolds. The pitching has been phenomenal, too, with four of their five starters all well above-average, while their bullpen has done a great job of finishing things off for them.

There are some concerns with the pitching continuing to be quite this strong, given that things don’t look as pretty in the world of adjusted ERA as they do unadjusted. However, this is a young pitching staff succeeding in an environment built to crush that very thing: The normal rules haven’t applied to the Rockies over the years because they don’t play in a normal environment — so we can’t necessarily look at them like we do a normal team. What we should look at them as, though, is a contender.