The Rockies presently sit atop the NL West, and they own the best record in the National League. Before the season started, the FanGraphs community identified the Rockies as the team the projections were most underrating, but then, on the other hand, the Rockies also fell victim to a number of early-season health problems. It’s been an outstanding two and a half months, in other words, and the Rockies’ playoff odds have soared to nearly 90%.

Plenty has already gone right, and these being the Rockies, they’ll forever be a source of certain intrigue. There’s no separating the Rockies from the reality that they play in baseball’s weirdest environment, and Travis just wrote on Monday about the Rockies learning to pitch with confidence at Coors Field. The adaptability of the pitching staff has been a major story early on, with so many young successes. But I’d like to quickly highlight something else. It’s something very simple! Here are the Rockies’ year-to-year franchise winning percentages at home:

The present Rockies are at .618, which would stand as their best mark since 2010. Now here’s the same plot, but for road games instead:

The present Rockies are at .658, which would very easily be their highest mark ever. Only once before have the Rockies won even half of their road games — 2009, when they went 41-40. They’re already 25-13. The Rockies have yet to play half of their games, and the samples get even smaller when you split them in two, so I don’t want to jump the gun or anything. But, quietly, a huge development here has been the Rockies playing well outside of Colorado. That’s been a problem of theirs forever.

Over the previous decade, the Rockies won 54% of their home games, ranking them 15th in baseball. Nice and average. Over the same span of time, the Rockies won a hair under 40% of their road games, ranking them 29th in baseball. No other team had a bigger such difference in rank, and no other team had a bigger such difference in winning percentage. The Rockies deal with twin phenomena, which are almost impossible to separate: they get a home-field advantage, and they also get a road-field disadvantage. Theories have abounded. I probably don’t need to go over them all.

Simply, the Rockies have been able to win at home. They’ve needed to do something about the other half of their games. There’s evidence, now, that something has organizationally clicked. It’s also too early to declare that — the Rockies have faced a softer road schedule. Their home opponents have an average winning percentage of .511, while their road opponents have an average winning percentage of .462. That’s a thing. That’s a partial explanation. But it’s not a *complete* explanation. The Rockies are showing a reduced home/road split, and it’s happening by the road numbers getting better, instead of the home numbers getting worse.

I don’t know when we’ll be able to say anything for sure. Park factors always take a while to stabilize, and the Rockies’ schedule will even out. It’s not like the Rockies are suddenly better when they aren’t at Coors Field. That wouldn’t make any sense. But right now, they’re running a hell of a reverse split. They’re literally the last team you’d expect to be doing that. If we’re going to talk about why the Rockies are where they are, this has to be a part of the conversation. It’s something out of the Rockies’ wildest dreams.