Clough: Rockies postseason still runs through NL West, odds remain long
Jul 17, 2018, 5:14 PM | Updated: 5:16 pm
Just a few weeks ago, FiveThirtyEight gave the Colorado Rockies a 3 percent chance of making the postseason. Today, those odds sit at 26 percent.
“There is a more than a one in four chance, according to FiveThirtyEight, that the Rockies make the playoffs, and about two and a half weeks ago their playoff chances rated by the same agency were at about 3 percent,” said 104.3 The Fan’s Sandy Clough on Monday.
“It’s gone from 3 percent to 26 percent in less than three weeks. That’s how quickly sometimes in sports things can change.”
But, despite increasing its probability exponentially over the past few weeks, Clough said the Rockies odds of playing in the postseason still seem long.
Last week, Clough said to make the playoffs out of the National League West, the Rockies would have to win it.
“And they’re not going to win this division,” he said.
Denver Post Rockies reporter Patrick Saunders, joining Clough on Monday, said teams leading the Rockies in the wild card chase have “come back to the pack,” as of late and it’s not “crazy” a second-place finisher in the N.L. Central or N.L. East could be caught.
“A while ago that didn’t seem possible. It looked like the N.L. West was only going to get one candidate for the postseason, and that was by winning the division,” Saunders said. “It’s not quite so clear-cut as it was, partly because the Rockies and Dodgers both got very hot.”
Clough, however, remains of the opinion the road to the playoffs for Colorado runs through its division — a tough, if not insurmountable, task.
“I still think it will be one team. I still think they have to win this division. I think that’s a tough chore,” Clough said.
“We talked about their playoff chances measured by FiveThirtyEight, as of this moment at 26 percent. Their chances of winning the division: 10 percent. The Dodgers chances of winning the division: 59 percent.”
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