Earlier this week, Travis Sawchik took note of some steps that Colorado Rockies pitchers have taken this year to better succeed in the context of the team’s challenging home park. Jeff Sullivan added to the conversation the next day, observing that the Rockies have been fantastic on the road this season. To continue the investigation of Colorado’s strong campaign, I’ve attempted here to understand what factors have contributed to the Rockies’ road record — which stands at 25-13 entering today, the second-best mark in the majors. My conclusion? A good bullpen, the club’s first decent defense in quite some time, and some luck.

The Rockies have one of the best records in the majors this year. Examining merely the raw numbers, one might conclude that the club’s offense, which ranks fourth in runs per game, is largely to thank for that. That would be a bad conclusion to reach, however. For the Rockies, in their stadium, fourth is actually quite bad. After adjusting for park, the team’s offensive is 15% worse than league average, fifth worst in the majors. One might argue that the park adjustment penalizes hitters too much for Coors Field. Perhaps that’s the case. Even so, the Rockies have recorded a below-average offensive mark away from Coors, as well. Their offense, by most measures, just hasn’t been that great.

There are also suggestions that the club is perhaps getting a bit lucky. While the Rockies have compiled a 47-27 record overall, Pythagorean win percentage (which estimates a club’s record based on runs scored and allowed) has them at 43-31, while BaseRuns (which strips out sequencing) has them at 40-34. That could go a long way in explaining the Rockies road record: just chalk it up to luck and be done.

We can’t actually do that, though, because most of that luck has come at home for the Rockies. In 36 home games, Colorado has outscored their opponents by just 19 runs; on the road, that margin is 46 runs. At least in terms of runs scored and prevented, the Rockies have earned their road success.

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No team’s batters have ever seen fewer four-seam fastballs than the Houston Astros this year. Few teams’ pitchers, meanwhile, have thrown fewer four-seam fastballs than the Houston Astros this year. This all has something to do with changes in baseball, yes, and also with the personnel on this current team. But there’s also a wrinkle to the thing that tells us a little more about why these trends are happening, and why the Astros are at the forefront in both cases.

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Zack Granite is hitting the ball as hard as anyone in Triple-A. Not in terms of power — the 24-year-old Minnesota Twins prospect is a slasher, not a basher — but the line drives have been coming fast and furious. Granite leads the International League in batting average by a whopping 30 points. Jump-starting the Rochester Red Wings’ offense out of the lead-off spot, the left-handed-hitting outfielder is slashing .349/.404/.494.

When Eric Longenhagen profiled Granite in his Twins top-prospect list, he wrote that “his ability to play center field well, run, and put the bat on the ball, points toward a near-certain big-league role of some kind.” When (and if) that comes to fruition is yet to be determined, but the 2013 14th-round pick out of Seton Hall University is making a case for it to happen soon. Since June 2, Granite is 37 for 75, with nine doubles, three triples, a home run, and 11 walks.

Granite talked about his game — and tossed a few playful jabs in the direction of one of his teammates — when Rochester visited Pawtucket over the weekend.

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Granite on an adjustment that’s helped fuel his surge: “I’ve moved a little closer to the plate. I think that has kind of helped me see pitches better. A lot of pitches away that were strikes, I was taking. That’s my game — going the other way — so I was kind of getting away from my game. I also just feel really good at the plate right now, which is obviously helping a lot.

“Opposite field is my security blanket, but I’m getting better at pulling the ball. I worked on that a lot last year with my manager, Doug [Mientkiewicz]. I’d always been ‘stick to left, stick to left,’ and he helped me learn how to pull the ball — how to attack it the right way. That’s another repertoire, another factor, to my game now.”

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On June 3rd of this year, with the Cardinals leading 2-1 in the fifth inning and Tommy Pham on first with two outs, Jon Lester quickly took his left foot off the Wrigley Field pitching rubber and lobbed a throw over to first baseman Anthony Rizzo.

Pham, who had taken a 19-foot lead, was picked off first base to end the inning on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Chicago.

While the play seemed rather ordinary, it wasn’t. The pickoff was highly unusual because it was Lester’s first successful pickoff since 2015 and just his third since 2012. It was meaningful because, entering this year, Lester had all but stopped throwing to first — or in any direction other than home plate — because of the psychological block referred to as the “yips” in athletic parlance.

Lester declined to address the play afterward telling reporters: “Whatever… I just try and get outs.’’

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Arizona at Colorado | 15:10 ET
Godley (50.0 IP, 77 xFIP-) vs. Senzatela (83.1 IP, 100 xFIP-)
Per the author’s haphazard calculations, this D-backs and Rockies game is the day’s most promising. Neither club has been particularly well acquitted by these so-called NERD scores over the past few years. This season, however, has been different. Arizona has benefited from improbable success on the base paths. Colorado, for their part, have been one of the league’s top defensive clubs — led, in particular, by Nolan Arenado in that effort. Perhaps most notably, both teams feature nearly a 50% chance of making the divisional series this year.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Arizona Radio.

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It’s difficult to overstate how much Freddie Freeman means to the Braves. He is, at present, the face of the franchise, and rather than trade Freeman, his general manager would sooner give his right arm. It’s not just that Freeman’s the best player on the Braves — Freeman is the Braves, for all intents and purposes. Although he isn’t Mike Trout, he’s the Braves’ Mike Trout, and the Angels aren’t going to trade Mike Trout. They’re going to cherish him, feature him, build around him, promote the hell out of him. The Braves have been going through a difficult stage. Freeman’s helped to keep them marketable.

Freeman’s great. He’s gotten some amount of MVP support in three separate years. He’s long been firmly entrenched as the Braves’ everyday first baseman, and there was never really any question about that. That is, until now. As soon as Freeman got injured, the team dealt for Matt Adams. Adams started to hit well almost immediately. Now it looks like a healthy Freeman could play third base in order to keep Adams in the lineup. What’s even weirder is, I think it makes sense?

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Episode 750
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the immodest guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 10 min play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan have an only slightly outdated discussion of Freddie Freeman’s potential position change and a Coors Field scoreboard message, then answer listener emails about a ground-rule-double derby, an amateur GM taking over a team, where pitcher mechanics come from, what writers root for, how to tell when a new metric makes sense, Jake Arrieta’s free agency, hitters who get plunked more often than they walk, a different way to charge the mound, the predictive power of foul balls, how to pick a favorite team, whether Aaron Judge will be a trailblazer, the relationship between jams and rallies, and more.

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