There’s a danger to declaring a seemingly overperforming team is done after they get swept by one of the favorites. Molly Knight did it last year, got appropriately roasted for it, and it’s still funny.
Restore order, huh? I got yer order right here!
But on the other hand, like, the Rockies? The Rockies? Come on, no way they’re actually good.
I know that I am falling into the same trap that so many commentators did last year. Last year, it was supposed to be the Dodgers and the Padres duking it out, so when the Giants were suddenly on top of the division, it was easy to dismiss them as a fluke. When they stayed there for months on end, it was easy to assume the season would end like it always does: with the Dodgers winning the division.
Folks, I am pleased to announce that the Dodgers did not win the division.
Well, here we are, and it’s a year later, and we’re the commentators assuming that we know how things will shake out. Well, okay, I can’t actually hear you so maybe you’re the one person who’s convinced that all five teams in the NL West will end up over .500, but something tells me that’s not the case.
I mean, the Diamondbacks are going to fade, right? The Rockies are going to fade, aren’t they? I sure think so. I 100% think so. No doubt in my mind. The Giants just swept the Rockies, and they did it while barely breaking a sweat, scoring at least 7 runs every game and only having one ninth inning that was remotely close. They embarrassed the Rockies, and they did it because they are inherently better than the Rockies in both character and sporting acumen. Case closed.
It’s totally fair for that to be your evaluation, just like it was totally fair for that to be everyone else’s evaluation of the Giants last year.
Consider two things, then: just how unlikely it was for the Giants to have the season they had last year, and how their having that season opens up the possibility for any other team to also have that season.
I’m not saying that I think it’s particularly likely that the 2022 Rockies are going to be the next team to shock the world. But just the idea of shocking the world inherently means something baffling is happening. Now, when you do a deep dive and figure out what was actually going on, you’ll find some root causes that you hadn’t considered could be so powerful. For the 2021 Giants, those included maximizing platoon advantages and the player development team getting into biomechanics and big data in ways that made them more effective than the rest of the league at making their players better.
Maybe these Rockies have something like that that the rest of us won’t see until someone writes an article on it in late July. Or maybe they don’t, and they’ll fade, but the Diamondbacks have a guy who just works on starting pitchers’ pitch sequencing, so their hitters are disproportionately likely to know what pitch is coming next. Or maybe the Angels dusted off the manual that said “Find more good players” and realized they should simply find more good players, and did.
I don’t know who’s for real and who was just a monthlong flash in the pan. One series can’t give us too much information, other than maybe to reinforce that the shores of McCovey Cove are still a bleak hellscape for the Colorado Rockies. But it’s worth remembering that surprise teams are, by definition, surprising. They won’t necessarily be those up-and-coming Blue Jays, who everyone predicted would be a force. It can happen like it happened with the Giants last year, suddenly and out of nowhere.
Whether that’s the case with any particular team, there’s no way to know in May. You find that out as you see if they maintain their hot pace, if as the summer heats up the team doesn’t cool down. People were predicting the 2021 Giants would fade for months, and they stubboronly refused. The odds are against any of these particular team repeating that feat, but it’s not impossible.
Weirder things have happened. Weirder things will happen again. It’s always possible that they are happening right now.