My mom, a die-hard Rock­ies fan, has point­ed out to me on sev­er­al occa­sions that I’m too neg­a­tive when I write about the team.

I’ve told her that when a team opens the sea­son 11–3 but then goes 9–20 to stum­ble to the edges of the play­off race, it deserves tough scruti­ny. I’m not sure she buys my argu­ment, but what’s a son to do?

Any­way, to hon­or my moth­er, I’ll put on a hap­py face and present the things that must hap­pen in order for the Rock­ies to be one of eight Nation­al League teams to qual­i­fy for the 2020 postseason:

Fin­ish 31–29

I fig­ure that record will get the Rock­ies in, although a 30–30 record might do the trick. As I write this, Col­orado would have to go 11–6 down the stretch in order to win 31 games.

Start­ing pitch­ing to rescue

On Fri­day, lefty Kyle Free­land par­rot­ed the Rock­ies’ oft-repeat­ed phrase, say­ing, “We have to start click­ing on all cylin­ders.” When I asked Free­land want he meant by that, he said: “To me, it starts with the start­ing rota­tion. That means that guy set­ting the tone ear­ly on in the first two or three innings, let­ting the oppo­si­tion know that we’re not here to mess around.”

Free­land and Anto­nio Sen­za­tela have, for the most part, done that this sea­son. Open­ing day starter Ger­man Mar­quez? Not so much. He entered Fri­day night’s game against the Angels in a funk, hav­ing gone 0–4 with a 6.00 ERA since his last win on Aug. 4. Sim­ply put, Mar­quez has to step up in the four starts he has left.

Deliv­er hits in the clutch

Col­orado entered the week­end with a .258 aver­age with run­ners in scor­ing posi­tion, rank­ing 15th in the majors. It also would be help­ful if the Rock­ies would hit more home runs with men on base. Their 22 homers with men on ranked 20th in the majors. Atlanta, by com­par­i­son, had hit 41 enter­ing the weekend.

Black­mon must heat up

The beard­ed one got off to a siz­zling start that coin­cid­ed with his team’s hot start. As late as Aug. 23 he was still hit­ting .390. But then Char­lie Black­mon got as cold as Colorado’s wonky Sep­tem­ber weath­er. Enter­ing Fri­day, he had struck out at least once in a career-long 14 con­sec­u­tive games and was bat­ting just .157 (8‑for-51) over those 14 games.

Find anoth­er depend­able reliever

Daniel Bard looks like the real deal as a clos­er. Yen­cy Almonte, Mychal Givens and Tyler Kine­ly, despite some hic­cups, have been rea­son­ably reli­able. But the Rock­ies des­per­ate­ly need anoth­er late-game reliev­er to emerge.

Can it be Car­los Estevez? With a 98 mph fast­ball and a sharp slid­er, he cer­tain­ly has the fire­pow­er to get the job done. As late as Aug. 25, his ERA was 2.25, but he’s been inef­fec­tive in four of his past five out­ings and his ERA is now 6.41.

The big right-han­der had been a shut­down artist on the road, not allow­ing a run in his first eight games away from Den­ver, with oppo­nents bat­ting just .188 against him. But on Sept. 4 at Los Ange­les, he allowed a sea­son-high four runs on four hits in a loss to the Dodgers. Then Estevez served up the win­ning run on Mon­day night in San Diego’s 1–0 win at Pet­co Park. Estevez has the stuff but can he har­ness it?

The bot­tom line

It’s not too late for the Rock­ies to make a run to the play­offs. Of course, that would like­ly get a best-of-three, open­ing-round match against the Dodgers.

Sor­ry about that, mom.