TUCSON - Optimism is not a hard habit to break, not where the Rockies are concerned. They will bend it over their knee and crack it for you.

But it can be delayed as well as revised. Conversations with assorted baseballers and followers this spring nearly have convinced me the Rockies did not finish in last place last season.

If the actual numbers were not stored for all time in baseball's many volumes, had we only the word of those who were actually there, we could very well believe the Rockies were, oh, 86-76 instead of the other way around.

And even at that, of course, the Rockies would have finished two games behind the Padres and the Dodgers. To apply the standard of that great football pessimist, Mike Shanahan, happiness has room for only one team at the end of the year.

One cannot go through 162 baseball games in a snit. Even Lou Piniella, as he will find out, cannot do that. In baseball, small moments of joy are allowed and wouldas and couldas and shouldas become a comfort through the long winter.

In the Rockies' case, they should have done better, they could have done better, and what's more, they will do better.

Which brings us back to optimism. No use scrubbing it off like one of those carnival tattoos until necessary. What is more important is that it allows me to adjust my annual Best Case Scenario to a happier result.

Every spring, I have applied my BCS formula, it has not, alas, worked out or even come close to working out. The Rockies have finished last and last and last and . . . well, you know the address.

So if I hear Todd Helton sighing that last year the division was there for the taking or Clint Hurdle figuring where just a few more runs were to be found or Dan O'Dowd blaming lost chances, well, who am I to be so strict?

Why not feel better by imagining what might have happened, picturing it exactly, the strikeout in the ninth inning, the base hit with two men on, the double play to kill an inning?

Optimism need not be stretched to imagine these things. They are done all the time and by worse teams than the Rockies. I actually saw the Texas Rangers do all of them in the same afternoon.

In order to figure the best the Rockies can do in a season, I have used the simple formula of applying the best ever done by a Rockies player and projected it over the coming season, the Best Case Scenario.

Example: The best seasons of all the Rockies' pitchers added together would come to 83 victories, hardly enough even if it matches the best seasons the Rockies have ever had.

But if I apply what might have happened, what could have been, to my BCS formula, it is easy to get to the 90 or 95 wins it will take for the Rockies to matter in September.

So, adapting the Rockies' own state of mind, I am changing the Best Case Scenario slightly to the Best Case Scenario If Only.

That BCSIO represents that little bit more that we all know was there if only the tag had been quicker, the throw had been straighter, the ball had carried, the umpire hadn't been picking his teeth, all those little things that just seem to happen to the Rockies.

So, when we look at Jeff Francis' high season win total of 14, we imagine if only the seven games he started in which he got no decision were victories, that puts the Rockies to 90 wins right there.

And Aaron Cook missed nearly a whole season because of serious medical problems, not even baseball related. Hardly his fault. He might have had another five or six wins in parts of either of the seasons he was laid up. That gets the Rockies right up in New York territory, either the Yankees or the Mets, who led baseball last season with 97 wins.

The BCSIO works with hitters, too. Helton gamely made a respectable season out of misfortune. If only he had been healthy, he would have hit another 10 to 15 homers.

If only in his best season more runners had gotten on ahead of him, he would have had 160 runs batted in instead of a league-leading 147.

This is the third year of the corps of young players the Rockies have accumulated to make good on the Generation R promise.

If only all of them had worked out as they should have, if Cory Sullivan were better, there would have been no need to get Willy Taveras, and maybe Jason Jennings would still be anchoring the pitching staff.

If only. It sure makes the game of baseball a whole lot easier.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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