Continue reading »]]> Yesterday was a brutal game for the Rockies. The team lost the game and more importantly Carlos Gonzalez left the game early after being hit by a foul ball, then Dexter Fowler left after being hit by a pitch and if that wasn’t enough Troy Tulowitzki left the game late after diving for a baseball.

The good news is that CarGo just has a contusion on his ankle and it is not broken. He is likely to miss a few games, but with the bad news coming we can only hope he plays through it.

The second piece of good news is that Dex just has a bruised knuckle and he shouldn’t miss any time. Both he and CarGo are officially listed as “day-to-day”, and, as the great Keith Olbermann used to say on Sportscenter “aren’t we all?”

Now to the bad news: Tulo is going to miss 4-6 weeks with a broken rib. Josh Rutledge is being recalled from AAA to take Tulo’s spot on the roster.

OK, I used to be on the side that argued that Tulo wasn’t fragile because two of his injuries that caused him to miss time weren’t caused by “normal baseball activities”. But now this makes three injuries that will put him on the DL for an extended period of time that occurred due to “normal baseball activities”.

To summarize: his first major injury came in 2008 when he tore his left quadriceps during a cold game in San Francisco, when he returned to action after that initial DL stint he went back on the DL after breaking a bat and cutting his hand, then in 2009 his wrist was broken after being hit by an Alex Burnett pitch and finally last season he was sidelined for most of the year after the doctors found scar tissue near his left groin.

That is now three of his five injuries that sent him to the DL caused by just playing baseball (including the broken rib). Maybe the scar tissue isn’t related, but three of the five injuries were just Tulo’s body not being able to handle playing baseball or performing baseball related activities. He is only going to get older and as we age we get more fragile…

Is Tulo injury prone? I would think calling him fragile at this point is well within reason. Since the start of the 2007 season Tulo has played in only 75% of regular season games. He has never played in more than 155 games in a season and has only played in 150 or more games in a year twice in his career. Players are going to miss time, that is inevitable, but the Rockies need Tulo on the field for 155-160 games a year.

No, I don’t think the answer is switching him to third base. I think the Rockies have the best all around shortstop in the game and they need to play him there (besides, what would the Rockies do with Nolan Arenado?). How do they keep him healthy? That’s an impossible question to answer. When healthy he needs to play and play shortstop and just hope he can stay healthy.

What happens to the Rockies?

According to baseball-reference.com Tulo is already worth nearly four wins this season (3.6 to be exact). That is irreplaceable on the current Rockies roster.

Tulo is one of only three shortstops with double digit home runs in 2013 and he has three more than J.J. Hardy in Baltimore. He is the only shortstop in baseball slugging over .600. He is the only shortstop in baseball with an on-base percentage above .400. He is the only shortstop in baseball with a wRC+ over 152 and his wRC+ is a whopping 172. He is by far and away the best hitting shortstop in baseball. Period. No questions asked. When you add in his fielding (currently third among shortstops in UZR) he is clearly the best shortstop in baseball. He can field and he can hit.

Who replaces Tulo at short?

If it is Jonathan Herrera, he of 1.6 WAR in the past four seasons combined, then the Rockies are at least a few wins worse while Tulo is out.

If it is Rutledge (most likely) who has a negative WAR number in his first 104 games in the big leagues, then the Rockies might be even more worse off.

Of course, I like the upside of Rutledge at short over Herrera with DJ LeMahieu playing second.

In the next eight weeks the Rockies have divisional games against the Giants (three games), Dodgers (seven), Diamondbacks (three) and Padres (three) for a total of 16 games out of the next 51. The only good news is there aren’t many divisional games in the next month and a half for the Rockies. I look at divisional games since they are worth a little more in the grand scheme of things.

These next few weeks are going to hurt. The Rockies will need a little more from guys like Arenado, LeMahieu and now Rutledge offensively.

What do you think happens to the Rockies in Tulo’s absence? Do you think they slip in the standings? Significantly? Not at all? Let me know below in the comments.

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It's hard not to like Cuddy as a fan. He is great with the fans and hustles his butt off in the field and on the bases. But would Beltran have been better for the team?

Prior to the 2012 season the Colorado Rockies were looking for an outfielder to replace the Seth Smith/Ryan Spilborghs combo in right field. The best player available was Carlos Beltran who had just made a big impact with the San Francisco Giants after being traded mid-season from the New York Mets. Many Rockies fans wanted the team to go after Beltran and figured he could be had for cheap since he has been known for being an injury risk. Instead the organization signed Michael Cuddyer to a three year 30 million dollar deal.

Many thought that Cuddy was overpaid and when the Cardinals signed Beltran for two yeas and $26 million you can count me as one of the fans who thought the Rockies made the wrong decision. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved the energy and enthusiasm Cuddy has brought to the team but if playing time (Cuddy being more reliable than Beltran) was one of the reasons the Rockies signed Cuddy over Beltran, I am guessing that hasn’t turned out to be correct.

After watching Beltran hit another home run against the Rockies and Cuddy on the bench I figured I would check to see who has played more games since the start of 2012. My hunch is that Beltran has been on the field more often.

Checking my favorite site, baseball-reference.com, I see that Beltran has played in 184 games since the start of 2012 and Cuddy has played in 132 games. So much for Cuddy being the “safe and reliable” option.

Might as well keep comparing…

Since 2012 Beltran is hitting .276/.345/.507 with 41 home runs, 29 doubles and one triple. He has an OPS+ of 131 and 338 total bases. According to BR.com he has been worth 4.8 wins above replacement and his defense has been almost dead average.

Since 2012 Cuddy is hitting .275/.334/.512 with 23 home runs, 38 doubles and three triples. He has an OPS+ of 111 and 244 total bases. According to BR.com he has been worth 1.7 wins above replacement and his defense has been worth nearly -1.5 wins above replacement (costing the team a win and a half).

Defensive metrics are what they are – flawed, but I don’t think anyone will argue that Cuddy has been all that great in the field. But when looking at their triple slashes they have been just about the same player. Cuddy hasn’t the ball over the fence at the same rate as Beltran but he has hit the ball with power producing more doubles. Imagine Beltran in Coors Field.

This season isn’t over yet and possibly Beltran gets hurt and misses a bunch of time. Or maybe Cuddy misses more time with this disc/neck issue. I won’t say that the Rockies didn’t get a good player when they signed Cuddyer, but he hasn’t been worth 10 million a year for three years. Yet. Beltran, on the other hand, has been worth this 13 million a year.

Continue reading »]]> There are plenty of Rockies fans who hate the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Rockies don’t really have a rival, in my mind, so depending on which fan you ask you may get a different response to the question “which NL West team is the biggest rival to the Rockies?”

I bet you get a lot of folks who say Arizona who remember Eric Byrnes and 2007 like it was yesterday. A lot will say the San Francisco Giants because of their recent dominance in the division. And everyone hates big spenders like the New York Yankees, so what happens when a mega-spender is in the same division? Hate the Dodgers. The Padres? Well, no one hates them because they never win.

But as much as you might hate the Los Angeles Dodgers and think Matt Kemp is silly for dating Rhianna at one point (a bigger character flaw, if you ask me, than playing for the Dodgers), you have to like him for this.

Ready the full article on Yahoo!.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Continue reading »]]> Take all of this for what it is worth – a real small sample size – but it is pretty apparent that the Rockies have a few studs and thankfully they finally made the switch at third base. All stats (pictures) come from Fangraphs.com. (Click on them to make them bigger)

The first picture is comparing all of the Rockies who have played third base this year. Arendao has been a whiz at third with his glove making spectacular plays and his bat has already outpaced the likes of Chris Nelson in a weeks time and half as many plate appearances. (BTW, Nelson was traded to the New York Yankees for a player to be named later.) Even if Arenado doesn’t hit another home run all season he has hit more than Nelson will for the rest of the year – and maybe the rest of his career? Look at those differences in wRC+ and the fielding metric in WAR!

We all know Troy Tulowitzki is the best shortstop in baseball, but watch out for the kid in Arizona. Didi Gregorius is a stud and the center piece in a nine-player trade this offseason in which the Diamondbacks sent Trevor Bauer to Cleveland. Even with the time missed Tulo is leading the SS WAR race even with a horrid base running metric. But, much like Arenado in Denver, Gregorius is crushing the ball in his first week of play.

Finally, check out the top outfielders early in the year. There is Dexter Fowler ahead of guys like Ryan Braun, Mike Trout and his teammate Carlos Gonzalez. If Dex can stay healthy he truly has a chance to breakout this year and become one of the top outfielders in all of baseball.

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Nelson was a liability in the field for the Rockies

In 71 plate appearances in 2013 Chris Nelson had a total of three extra-base hits and none of those three went over the fence.

In 664 plate appearances with the Rockies in total, spanning four seasons, Nelson had hit 13 home runs for the Rockies.

For all of the talk in the Root Sports broadcast booth about how good Nelson was at third base or how he hit for a high average, none of that is or was true. 664 plate appearances is basically one full season for a player who plays every day and hits at or near the top of a lineup. While it is hard to look at 664 plate appearances that span four seasons as one single season it can tell us what Nelson is, as a player: average. And when I say average I mean for a second baseman.

In those 664 plate appearances Nelson’s triple slash was .279/.322/.416. If we put those numbers against the numbers of the third basemen who qualified last year for batting titles Nelson’s average would rank 10^th out of 19 players, his on-base percentage would rank 15^th out of 19 and his slugging would rank 14^th out of 19. Pretty average, right? If we do the same but compare against second basemen he ranks 10^th out of 23 in average, 15/23 in OBP and 9/23 in slugging. Much better hitting profile as a second basemen.

It is pretty safe to say that as a third basemen Nelson is below par when it comes to hitting so for him to continue to get playing time he should be pretty good with the glove. He isn’t.

According to FanGraphs there were 31 players who accumulated at least 500 innings in the field at third base in 2012. When I sort those 31 players by Ultimate Zone Rating scaled to a 150 game season, Nelson ranks dead last among those third basemen. When sorting by range, he ranks 30^th out of 31. When sorting by fielding percentage he ranks 29^th out of 31. FanGraphs also lets the “fans” scout players and rank them on various defensive attributes, take this for what it is, and when looking at this data the fans have Nelson ranked 33^rd out of 44 third basemen ranked.

No matter how you slice it Nelson is not a good fielder. He couldn’t hack it at second base and even when moved to a less important (and supposedly easier) defensive position he still couldn’t carry his weight.

Chris Nelson was a light hitting second baseman – all average, no pop and no on-base – posing as a third baseman with a bad glove in the field. It shouldn’t take much to bump him off of the team.

Enter Nolan Arenado.

Yesterday on Twitter Tracy Ringolsby said with the utmost certainty that Arenado was not kept in the minor leagues for the first 20 or so games of the season to keep his service time down. I find that very hard to believe. Since the Rockies kept him in the minor leagues for as long as they did in 2013 (which wasn’t very long in the grand scheme of a full season) the Rockies now have control over Arenado until 2019 as opposed to 2018 if he had broken camp with the team to start the season.

I think it is a bit of both.

I think the Rockies front office, much like everyone else, figured the team would stink in 2013. Sure the squad can hit, but no one thought they could pitch like they have. Most people figured the starting rotation would look more like Jeff Francis than Jorge De La Rosa or Jhoulys Chacin. If the team is going to stink in 2013 why rush Arenado? Let him play more in the minor leagues and develop AND get more years of control over him before he is eligible for free agency.

Then came the season and the smoking hot start for the Rockies. The team is hitting, as expected, but the rotation is also doing pretty darn well. Take away some ghastly starts from Francis and the rotation has been solid and good luck finding anyone who thinks otherwise. Now what do the Rox do? At this point they might as well keep Arenado in the minor leagues for a few more days to retain that extra year of rights. There was no denying he deserved a shot at the big leagues: he was batting .364/.392/.667 at the time of his call to the Rockies. As stated above; Chris Nelson wasn’t doing anything to keep Arenado from the club. While those stats by Arenado were in a very hitter friendly environment there just wasn’t any reason to keep him off of the big club at this point. If anything his glove is worth at least a few wins in 2013 over Nelson.

Expect more of this: Arenado giving high-5's after hitting bombs.

Arenado finally got his chance on Sunday to join the Rockies and the team made the decision to designate Nelson (which means teams can sign him if they choose and if no one signs him he will go to AAA for the Rockies).

Arenado made a quiet entrance with the Rockies on Sunday but last night he exploded by going 3-for-6 with his first career home run, two driven in and three runs scored as the Rockies pounded the Los Angeles Dodgers in LA – something that doesn’t happen often.

The Rockies are now 16-10 and hold a one game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks. It is early in the season, real early, but these games now count just as much as the ones in August and September. By adding Arenado the Rockies make their team better – markedly better. Where the team was in a rebuilding mode or a mode of waiting for young potential to develop to start the season, now the team is suddenly looking at making a splash in 2013 and will expect its young players to contribute – now.

Now if the team could just find a pitcher to bump Francis off of the team…

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DFA?

Yesterday I was stuck listening to the Rockies games on the radio or watching on MLB At Bat or MLB Gameday. Work interfered with the first game and then my kid got in the way of the second game. Both semi-decent excuses for not watching, right?

Ya, I don’t think so either. I’ll do better next time.

What was with Walt Weiss letting Jeff Francis bat in the bottom of the fourth inning and then not even walking him out to the mound in the top of the fifth? What a waste of an out and by far my biggest pet peeve while Jim Tracy was managing. Let’s hope that was the first and last time that Weiss does this.

Anyway, while listening to the radio Jerry and Jack kept referring to Francis as a “crafty lefty”, aka, he sucks. When a broadcaster refers to a pitcher as “crafty” they are just avoiding saying that he sucks and that he basically throws soft toss softball. When Francis’ tops out in the mid-80′s with his fastball even the cold weather can’t keep hitters in the park. Jon Garland basically throws the same stuff so the Atlanta Braves saw a soft toss, ground-ball inducing (on a good day) lefty in the first game followed by the same type of pitcher, but from the right, in the night cap.

It made for some nice hitting for the Bravos.

The radio guys kept driving home the point during the first game that Francis has to pitch ahead in the count to be effective and kept pointing out that the homers allowed were given up when he was behind. Here are each of the homers allowed, the count when the ball was hit, the pitch and pitch speed and location. Make of it what you will. Me? I think it is the glaring weakness of the Rockies showing, finally in week three of the season.

Thanks to Brooks Baseball for the Pitch FX pictures.

Game 1:
Against Jeff Francis
Justin Upton homers on 3-2 pitch, 77mph changeup

Dan Uggla homers on 3-1 pitch, 82 mph sinker

Evan Gattis homers on 1-1 pitch, 73 mph changeup

Game 2:
Again Jon Garland
Juan Francisco homers on 2-1 pitch, 81mph slider

BJ Upton homers on 2-2 pitch, 76mph curveball

Justin Upton homers on 0-0 pitch, 87mph fastball (four seam)

Continue reading »]]> Dexter Fowler is good.

I think that is a very safe statement, yet I am amazed at how many fans still would rather see Eric Young Jr. in the outfield than Dexter.

Dexter Fowler is one of the best five best center fielders in all of baseball.

*Look of bewilderment*

I think even that statement is safe, yet many Rockies fans would think I am crazy for making that statement.

Quick, short list of the best center fielders in all of baseball: Adam Jones, Matt Kemp, Mike Trout, Jacoby Ellsbury, Andrew McCutchen and…Colby Rasmus? I think it is safe to put Dex into the conversation with Kemp, Jones and McCutchen, Trout and if Ellsbury shows he is healthy then we can put him in this conversation, too. There is a strong list of second tier guys in center field: Carlos Gomez, Coco Crisp, Austin Jackson, Angel Pagan and Desmond Jennings. There are your strong fielders, no hit guys: Ben Revere, Chris Young (how he has fallen…), Peter Bourjos, etc. When I sit back and look at all of the names of guys who have accumulated at least 17 or 18 games in center this year the position is really strong so saying Dex is top five is really making a statement.

When I look at the stats since 2011 Dex ranks behind six to eight guys in wOBA and wRC+ and he falls way short in WAR due to some horrid fielding numbers – which I cannot stand by because I have watched enough games to know that Dex has not cost the Rockies nearly 17 runs on defense over the past two seasons.

When I just look at last year and so far in 2013 Dex only ranks behind Trout and McCutchen in wOBA, his on-base percentage over that time is third and he is eighth in slugging.

I think what gets a lot of folks caught up on Dex is that he is not a base stealer. I would put a lot of money on Dex winning a race from first to home against nearly anyone in baseball, but that top end speed just doesn’t translate to stealing bases. A lot of people still believe that to leadoff you need to steal bases and that just isn’t the case. Give me a guy with a .384 on-base since the start of 2012 over a guy with an on-base under .340 who can steal bases (Eric Young Jr.).

Without the threat of being sent to AAA, for no good reason, by Jim Tracy hanging over his head we might see an even better Dex in 2013 than we saw in 2012.

In 2013 Dex is already more than half way to his single-season best in home runs and two of his home runs this year came in PETCO, a notorious pitchers park. To top it off, so far Dex has a BABIP of .211 in ’13 and that is well over 100 points below his career norm. While his power numbers will surely slow down (he isn’t hitting 50+ homers) his on-base and batting averages should come up in the coming weeks.

If Dex can stay healthy I truly believe he inserts himself into the conversation with guys like Trout, Kemp and McCutchen as one of the best center fielders in baseball. Disagree? Let me know below in the comments.

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Even Dick Monfort (along with Dan O'Dowd and Sandy Alderson) helped shovel the snow at Coors yesterday. Thanks to the Colorado Rockies for the picture.

The Rockies are 10-4 and came from behind in a cold second game of a double-header and both of those are just as astonishing to me on this rainy Wednesday morning. Who would have thought the Rockies would come out of the gate firing like this? Who would have thought that the pitching would be this good? And I know for sure that last year, in the second game of a double-header, in weather as poor as it was yesterday, that there was no way the Rockies would come back and win.

There is something different about this team this year. Definitely something different about it than last year. I am trying hard not to jump on this bandwagon, trying hard. The team has beaten teams that were predicted to be bad this year and got swept by the one team that is supposed to be good. The team is one rough road trip away from being .500. But, man, is it fun so far.

The team is hustling. As I tweeted the other night, there isn’t any slacking on the base paths this year. The team is running hard from first to third with two outs and weekly hit fly balls to to the outfield for the third out. The team is hustling to first on ground balls to the infield. The team is hustling in the field. All things they didn’t do, or do often enough, last year.

Put the blame on Jim Tracy or put it on the players, it is definitely different last year. There are rumblings that the clubhouse was not cohesive last year and that some players quit on the team. Maybe those players are gone and the clubhouse is better off and it is showing on the field. I read a quote a few weeks ago where Troy Tulowitzki said that the clubhouse in 2007 was the best he has been apart of. Now that is obviously a statement about how great 2007 was and how well those guys got along, but for him to bring it up six years later I think it also says something about the disarray of the clubhouse in 2012.

Who else is ready to get on the bandwagon? Who else is going to hold off on changing their predictions until they see the results after the stretch of games between April 25th and May 12th where the Rockies visit Arizona and Los Angeles before returning home to face the Rays and Yankees and then head out to St. Louis? That will be a 15 game stretch in which the team will need to play well to win. The Rays are down right now, offensively, but that will change and even though the Yankees are beat up, it is still the Yankees. They also have six crucial early season games against two division rivals where they didn’t play well last year and finish off in St. Louis against a team some picked to go to the World Series.

I say: who cares? Like I said last week, let’s have fun! This team is fun to watch right now and baseball is supposed to be fun. If the team is still competing at the All-Star break we can start talking playoffs – playoffs?! Right now I am taking enjoyment in watching the Rockies care and compete, something they didn’t do last year.

And with that being said, here are some really fun pictures from yesterday thanks to a few different writers Twitter accounts:

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AT&T Park

…and SBC Park and Pac Bell Park.

All we heard about the past few days as the Rockies had the realization of what to expect in 2013 come crashing down in McCovey’s Cove in San Francisco was how bad the Rockies play in San Francisco, in particular at AT&T Park. I got to wondering…is it really an AT&T Park issue or is it a San Francisco Giants and their great pitching issue? Or is this just typical Rockies play on the road?

Here are the Rockies records, yearly, home and away by year from 2000-2012 (AT&T Park opened as Pacific Bell Park in 2000).

So all of that adds up to the Rockies being 102-131 against the Giants since 2000 with a record of 61-56 at home and 41-75 in San Fran. That is a .434 winning percentage overall, .521 at home and .353 on the road.

Duh, the Rockies are better at home. Let’s put some context around those numbers. Since 2000 the Rockies have a winning percentage of .469 (989-1118) overall, .547 (577-577) at home and .391 (412-641) on the road. Those aren’t too far off from the numbers against the Giants.

If we take out the two outlier years (2000 and 2003) in which the Rockies were particularly bad in San Francisco then the Rockies winning percentage against the Giants in Denver is .476 and in San Francisco the Rockies winning percentage is an even .400. Those numbers are really close to their overall home/road winning percentages over the past 10 years.

AT&T Park isn’t any different for the Rockies than any other park: they stink on the road. Expect road woes all year for the Rockies and hope that they perform a LOT better at home in 2013 than they did in 2012. (They only won 35 games in Denver in 2012, three games fewer than their worst seasons in 2011 and 2004. They average over 44 wins a year at home.)

Continue reading »]]> Here are some of the pictures I took on Friday and Saturday. For Opening Day we didn’t get tickets to the game, but that wasn’t going to keep us from the party that is Opening Day in LoDo. Saturday I used my first press credential of the year, and, wow, they totally redid the press box.

Here they are: