Tag Archives: Jamie Moyer

December 8, 2014

2015 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, Part 1

By Dave Krieger

This makes two years in a row, consecutively, that the U.S. Postal Service has delivered my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot to the correct box and not inserted it into a 300-page holiday catalog. That’s a good sign for 2015 and appropriate celebratory measures were taken.

Any year now I’m confident the Hall will transition to electronic voting, but this is baseball, so one step at a time. This year’s innovation: For the first time, they will confirm receipt of ballots.

Before the ballot arrived, I knew I would want to vote for more candidates than the maximum of 10 the Hall permits. My first scan of the ballot, with no benefit of statistical analysis or divine wisdom, produced 14 players that would get my vote. So this year’s consideration was less about the usual issue — Hall worthiness — and more about distinguishing among worthies to cull the list to 10.

Cutting is something newspaper people know about, and we don’t like it. It simplifies, it misleads, it sometimes make you look like an idiot. So I decided to protect myself. For the first time, I used sabermetrician Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system (the humble acronym for Jaffe WAR Score) as my initial screen to get down to the difficult qualitative choices.

In previous years, I looked at lots of numbers to confirm or dispute my impressions, but mostly I relied on the eye test, my totally subjective judgment of whether a player looked like a Hall of Famer. This year, it turned out there wasn’t that much difference between the two, and there were areas of agreement that I found encouraging, not so much for the reliability of my vision as for the chances of certain players I’ve been supporting to no avail up until now.

This happy coincidence is not always the case. For example, when I did my JAWS work last year, I found Jack Morris down so low among the starting pitchers I had to add memory to my laptop to find him. His deficit to the JAWS average of starting pitchers already in the Hall of Fame was massive. So I looked at some of the names above his and asked myself if I would rather have them start a big game. Guys like Mel Stottlemyre, Bartolo Colon, Camilo Pascual, Brad Radke, Jamie Moyer, Carlos Zambrano, Jimmy Key, and so on. The answer in all those cases was no.

The calculation of wins above replacement (WAR), whichever version you subscribe to, is too complex to permit easy diagnostics of the anomalies, but in Morris’s case, I imagined earned-run average was a major culprit. He ranks No. 394 at 3.90, putting him between Joe Nuxhall and Ben McDonald.

On the other hand, if you sort the list by wins, he bounds up to No. 44 all-time with 256. His neighbors here are Red Faber and Carl Hubbell, Hall of Famers both. Now, wins have become a deeply unfashionable stat for pitchers, owing to the many extraneous factors that affect them, but this is also slightly ironic because wins are what WAR allegedly measures.

Anyway, I’m not trying to re-litigate the Morris matter. His eligibility expired last year after he received 351 votes out of 571 ballots cast, or 61.5 percent. I think he has a pretty good shot to make it eventually through some iteration of the veterans committee because he was a horse and a hell of a competitor and for a while there, the dominant pitcher of the 1980s. But again, I digress. He’s a good example of the difference between quantitative and qualitative analytical methods in certain cases.

Let’s back up and explain the basics of the quantitative screen I used this year to get down to the serious calls. Here’s a link to the Baseball Reference explanation of JAWS; here’s one to the BR explanation of its version of WAR.

If you’re reading a 4,000-word post on this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame ballot marked “Part 1,” you probably know that WAR is a complicated formula — so complicated that it’s effectively impenetrable for non-math geeks — that attempts to boil down to a single number the overall value of a baseball player. It speaks to the combination of two human needs — certainty and simplicity. So long as the evaluation of players is based on many different categories, as it was for generations, it is messy, and the emphasis any one judge puts on each of those various categories can and often does change the outcome of the inquiry. That’s neither certain nor simple.

WAR’s many calculations and adjustments introduce subjectivity themselves — BR recently changed its definition of an “average” replacement player — or contribute subjectivity in the weight they are accorded in the overall formula. Since most fans like the sport a lot more than they like equations, especially complicated equations, they stop paying attention to the details pretty quickly. Like the passer rating in football, it’s a nice, simple number that many fans use and few can explain in detail. We have two main versions of WAR at present, which make slightly different subjective judgments along the way, and produce slightly different results.

At its most basic, WAR is an adding machine. Player A was X amount better than the average guy at his position, plug that into a formula and you get 2.4 extra wins for his team that year. Then you add up all those little premiums over the course of his career. Even though its modifications and adjustments are considered ameliorating factors, it rewards longevity in a big way — the more years of little numbers like that, the bigger the career total is going to be.

So, for example, Sandy Koufax, one of the best starting pitchers of all time according to pretty much anyone paying attention to the game when he was pitching, ranks No. 85 in the JAWS system, with a considerable deficit to the average JAWS score of starting pitchers already in the Hall of Fame. He’s down around a bunch of guys who aren’t in the Hall and aren’t likely to get there — Kevin Appier, Chuck Finley, Orel Hershiser, Tommy John, Frank Tanana, Wilbur Wood, et al. The JAWS system attempts to compensate for the longevity bias of WAR by averaging a player’s career WAR with his “peak” WAR — the seven highest annual scores of his career.  This is supposed to cover for players like Koufax, who were brilliant, but whose careers were cut short.

But, clearly, it doesn’t. Koufax’s peak WAR is higher than any of the guys I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but not by enough to make much difference in the overall calculation. Luckily, there was no WAR when Koufax became eligible for the first time in 1972 and he was elected on the first ballot with 87 percent of the vote, leading a class that also included Yogi Berra and Early Wynn.

I bring this up because it also contributes to this year’s biggest anomaly when using the JAWS system, which is John Smoltz. The former Braves hurler is on the ballot for the first time, following by one year former teammates Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, both of whom were elected on the first try. The voters and JAWS agreed on Maddux. Not so much on Glavine. Maddux ranks 10th all time on the JAWS meter, ahead of immortals like Bob Gibson and Warren Spahn, and pending immortals like Pedro Martinez. Glavine ranks 30th, behind all those guys, and behind a couple more on this year’s ballot — Curt Schilling and Mike Mussina. JAWS counts Maddux as way above the average Hall of Famer at his position, Glavine as barely above average.

Smoltz ranks 58th, well below average for the Hall of Fame, down around guys like Jim Bunning and David Cone. This is mostly because he quit starting for a while to help his team. From 2002-04, Smoltz registered 144 saves with ERAs of 3.25, 1.12 and 2.76. He received MVP votes four times in his career, and three of them were after those three remarkable years as a closer. The Braves made the playoffs in all three seasons. He’s credited with 6.7 wins above replacement for those three seasons combined. He got more than that (7.3) in 1996 alone, his Cy Young year as a starter.

So Smoltz fares poorly in the JAWS Hall of Fame analysis, in part because he’s listed with the starters and no allowance is made for all the starts he gave up to become one of the best closers in the game. For those of us not yet willing to sacrifice our own observations entirely to the gods of quantitative analysis, Smoltz requires an eye-test adjustment this year, which we will get to in Part 2. For the purpose of culling the field of 34 down to a more manageable number, JAWS was quite useful in quantifying the eye test results.

The no-hopers

1. 3B Aaron Boone

He’ll always have 2003, a moment seared into the memories of Red Sox fans who would not slay the beast for another year. Boone’s walkoff home run leading off the bottom of the 11th in Game 7 of the ALCS made him a Yankee hero, even though he played only 54 of his 1152 career games in Yankee pinstripes. His best days were in Cincinnati. He is ranked the 150th-best third baseman in big league history by his JAWS average (14.3). His deficit from the JAWS average for Hall of Famers at his position (40.7) is the greatest in this year’s class. The top comparable to him on Baseball Reference is Scott Brosius.

Every year, there are fans who squawk, “Why is he on the ballot?” I have known members of the screening committee and I agree with their bias toward inclusion. If you meet the basic requirements — a career of at least 10 seasons in the designated time period — I believe you ought to get your minimum one appearance on the ballot. A 10-year major league career is a big deal in any context other than this one. Appearing on the ballot once seems to me an appropriate reward. Boone won’t be back, and neither will the rest of the guys in this category.

2. 1B Tony Clark

Clark had a nice 15-year career with Tigers, Diamondbacks, Mets, Red Sox and Padres. He hit 251 homers with a lifetime .262 batting average and a career OPS of .824. The JAWS average for first basemen now in the Hall is 54.2. Clark’s is 14.2. That deficit (40.0) barely lost out to Boone’s for the title of No-hoper of the Year. His top comparable is Adam LaRoche.

3. SS Rich Aurilia

Aurilia played 15 seasons, mostly for the Giants, finishing with a long goodbye tour through Cincinnati, San Diego and Seattle. He was mostly a shortstop, but he played triple-figure games at each of the other infield positions as well. He had good power for an infielder, hitting double-figure home runs eight times, including an eyebrow-raising 37 in 2001, the year Barry Bonds hit 73 and a number of players looked like Popeye after the spinach. His JAWS deficit to Hall of Famers at his position is 37.3. No. 1 comparable: Brandon Phillips.

4. RF Jermaine Dye

Dye had some serious pop, hitting 44 homers for the White Sox, batting over .300 for the only time in his career and finishing fifth in MVP voting in 2006. He spent 14 years in the big leagues almost equally divided among the Royals, White Sox and A’s, with a nightcap in Atlanta. His deficit to the JAWS average of right fielders in the Hall is 36.4.

5. SP Jason Schmidt

Schmidt was an average starter for most of the first decade of his career, never pitching to an ERA under 4.00 until arriving in San Francisco in the latter part of the 2001 season. Quite suddenly, at the age of 30, he became an elite pitcher for the Giants, going 17-5 with a National League-leading ERA of 2.34. He finished second in Cy Young voting that year and fourth the following year, when he went 18-7 with a 3.20 ERA. As a result of this renaissance in San Francisco, the Dodgers gave him a big free-agent deal in 2007 — three years, $47 million. Alas, Schmidt blew out his shoulder and pitched just 43 mostly ineffective innings over two seasons for L.A. before calling it quits. He comes in at No. 284 on the starting pitchers’ JAWS list. His deficit to existing Hall of Famers is 33.4.

6. LF Cliff Floyd

Floyd was the 14th overall pick of the 1991 draft, and while he had a 17-year stay in the majors, he never became the star that early comparisons to Willie McCovey seemed to promise. He drove in more than 100 runs only once and hit as many as 30 homers twice. He was bedeviled by injuries and ended up playing for seven teams. Still, he finished with a career OPS of .840. His top comparable on Baseball Reference is Aubrey Huff. His JAWS Hall of Fame deficit is 27.9.

7. CF Darin Erstad

Erstad was a marvelous athlete whom the Angels made the first pick of the 1995 draft out of Nebraska. He was the punter for Tom Osborne’s ’94 Cornhuskers’ national championship team. Erstad arrived in the majors a year later and finished sixth in rookie-of-the-year voting despite playing only 57 games. He was an all-star at 24 and again at 26, receiving MVP votes both years. He was a five-tool player on the brink of stardom. After batting an astonishing .355 with a league-leading 240 hits in 2000, he never hit .300 again. After putting up double-figure home run totals in five of his first seven seasons, he never hit more than seven after the age of 28. His hustling style and proclivity for leaving his feet produced chronic issues with his shoulders, hamstrings and ankles. For most of the latter part of his career, he was battling one injury or another. His JAWS deficit to center fielders in the Hall is 26.7. On the bright side, he went back to Nebraska as a volunteer assistant for the baseball team in 2011 and Osborne, then the athletic director, named him head coach a year later. His top comparable at 23 was Jeff Bagwell. Ten years later, it was Mark Kotsay.

8. RP Eddie Guardado

Guardado would be a long way from Hall consideration anyway, but the fact that he’s a relief pitcher makes it impossible. He was a decent piece out of the pen for the Twins for years who suddenly became a closer, and a good one, for a four-year stretch from 2002-05. He was an all-star in ’02 and ’03, putting up a league-leading 45 saves in ’02 and following it with 41 the next year. The result was a nice free-agent deal with the Mariners and two more good years before he ran out of fuel. He’s No. 53 in career saves with 187. His JAWS deficit is 22.1. In the history of baseball, five relief pitchers have been inducted, so if you’re Eddie Guardado, you have no shot.

9. RP Troy Percival

Percival was a stud closer for a long time, so you’d think he’d have a chance, but keep in mind he’s way behind Lee Smith in the JAWS rankings and Smith got only 30 percent of the vote in his 12th season of eligibility last year. Percival is in the top 10 in career saves — No. 9 with 358. But again, the standard is the five incumbents — Dennis Eckersley, Hoyt Wilhelm, Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Rollie Fingers. Mariano Rivera will make it six when he’s eligible. Percival ranks behind them all, and behind Smith, too. In fact, his JAWS average is worse than those of Steve Reed, Dick Drago and Dave Giusti. It’s just not happening. His deficit to the Hall average at his position is 18.1

My kingdom for 5 percent

1. RF Sammy Sosa

You wouldn’t think that one of only two players in major league history to hit more than 60 homers in a season twice, one of only eight to hit more than 600 in a career, would be in any danger of falling off the ballot in just his third season of eligibility, but Sosa treated his entire career like an SNL skit. Like Bonds, he used performance-enhancing drugs to such excess that he became a massive, hulking, comic book parody of his former self, then pretended he didn’t understand English when hauled before Congress to explain this amazing transformation. He got 12.5 percent of the vote in his first year and 7.2 percent last year. Half as great a loss of support this year would send him on his way. Even if he’d done it honestly, his JAWS average of 51 wouldn’t justify his election. The average of the right fielders already in the Hall is 58.1. Even through the eyes of a Cubs fan, Sammy doesn’t pass the eye test.

2. 1B Don Mattingly

It doesn’t seem fair that you could drop off the ballot for lack of support the day you’re dropping off anyway by virtue of having been there 15 years without getting elected, but that is a possibility for Donnie Baseball. His election return of 8.2 percent of the vote last year was his lowest total in 14 years of eligibility. He hasn’t been above 20 percent since his second year on the ballot. For a stretch in the 1980s, he was as good as it got, but back trouble limited him to just four years of WAR of 5 or more, and that’s nowhere near enough. He also faces competition from a bunch of other first basemen who aren’t going to make it but have better numbers than he does. On the JAWS list, he ranks behind Norm Cash, Gil Hodges, John Olerud and Will Clark, none of whom are in the Hall. He also ranks behind Carlos Delgado and Fred McGriff, who are on the current ballot and also have little or no shot. His JAWS deficit to the Hall average first sacker is 15.3.

3. 1B Carlos Delgado

Delgado isn’t a close call according to JAWS — he’s 14.8 average WAR behind the existing Hall standard at first — but he was a very productive power hitter for a long time, so you wouldn’t think he’d be in any danger of missing the minimum to remain on the ballot. He has a career OPS of .940 and drove in at least 87 runs in 13 consecutive seasons. Nevertheless, it’s a very strong ballot and Delgado’s JAWS average ranks below McGriff’s. McGriff fell to 11.7 percent of the vote last year, losing half the support he got just two years before. If there’s an argument to be made that Delgado is one of the top 10 players on this year’s ballot, I’m not sure what it is.

4. RF Brian Giles

I’m also not sure why Giles does better on the JAWS tote board than Delgado. I’d take Delgado every time, although Giles was certainly a nice offensive player. Delgado had way more homers and RBI, a slightly better OPS+ and trailed in batting average by 10 points. It is true he also struck out a lot more than Giles, but that’s the price of that power (1512 RBI to 1078; 473 homers to 278). Both were below-average defenders, but Delgado somewhat further below average. Giles is a classic very good player who is nevertheless significantly short of the Hall standard by both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Like Delgado, you would expect him to exceed the minimum necessary to stay on for another year if the ballot weren’t so loaded. And he still should. His JAWS deficit among right fielders already in the Hall is 14.0.

Obvious cheaters

1. 1B Mark McGwire

The only thing that saves Sosa from appearing here, where he belongs, is the fact that he might fall off the ballot altogether, earning him a spot in the previous category. McGwire, the only player other than Sosa to hit more than 60 homers in a season twice, comes dangerously close to joining him there. But Mac managed 11 percent of the vote last year, so I’m guessing he survives again, although his number has come down from 23.7 percent in 2010. I realize there is a fair amount of sentiment among sabermetricians that there is no such thing as right and wrong, or we’re not worthy to assess it, or only numbers matter, or something along those lines. If you’re interested in why I don’t agree with this, I went into some depth about it in my post on last year’s ballot. McGwire, by the way, has a small deficit — 2.3 — to the average JAWS score of first basemen now in the Hall.

2. SP Roger Clemens

Clemens’ numbers are ridiculous, which, in his case, is not just an expression. At the age of 42, suddenly he was as good as he had ever been. In fact, he won the ERA title with the best mark of his career (1.87). In court, personal trainer Brian McNamee laid out his doping program in gruesome detail. Clemens’ able defense team got him off perjury charges, but that’s not the same as being innocent. According to JAWS, he’s the third-best pitcher of all time, behind Walter Johnson and Cy Young. His surplus to the average starter in the Hall is 41.5, which would be the highest on the ballot if it weren’t for . . .

3. LF Barry Bonds

Clemens redux. Thanks to the journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, and their book Game of Shadows, we know pretty much exactly what Bonds took and why. Like Clemens, he had a chronology-defying, chemistry-enabled, Greek God-like renaissance very late in his career, winning four consecutive MVP awards at the ages of 36, 37, 38 and 39. We had never seen anything like it before and, assuming Rob Manfred is slightly more on the ball than Bud Selig — a low bar — we will never see anything like it again. Like Clemens, as many have pointed out, he was probably a Hall of Famer before he started cheating, but those sportsmanship and integrity criteria established by the Hall don’t have the luxury of time travel. His surplus to the average JAWS score of Hall of Fame left fielders is 64.3, a number almost as big as his body in those days.

Just wide

1. Nomar Garciaparra

Nomar was a stud shortstop in a very impressive generation. Imagine a three-year stretch in which rookies named Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra enter the league playing the same position. The Red Sox made Nomar a first-round pick, the 12th overall, in 1994. Three years later, he was rookie of the year, an all-star and eighth in MVP voting. At the age of 23, he hit .306 with 30 home runs and 98 RBI. The next year was even better — .323, 35, 122 — and he finished second in the MVP voting to Juan Gonzalez. He won the batting title each of the next two years, at .357 and .372. If this was not the runup to a Hall of Fame career, it was hard to imagine why not. But it probably wasn’t. Injuries would turn Nomar old before his time and his 30s were nothing like his 20s. The average of his career WAR and peak WAR — 43.6 — is 11.1 below the average of shortstops already in the Hall. You can certainly make an argument for him. His JAWS rating puts him between Luis Aparicio and Joe Tinker, both of whom are in. The improvement in the offensive output at the position since then has changed the calculus.

2. 1B Fred McGriff

You look at those career numbers and it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t belong. Seven homers shy of 500. Twenty-one consecutive seasons of double-digit homers. An OPS just short of .900. MVP votes following eight different seasons. And yet, when you add them all up, he’s a full 10 wins over replacement short of the average for first basemen already in the Hall. In fact, he ranks behind Keith Hernandez, John Olerud and Will Clark, none of whom are enshrined. Of 20 first basemen in Cooperstown, McGriff’s JAWS average is better than four, worse than 16. He’d been getting about 20 percent of the vote in his first four years on the ballot, then fell to 11.7 percent last year as the ballot strengthened. Probably won’t do a lot better this year.

3. RF Gary Sheffield

Sheff had such a long, productive career, one is tempted to think of him as the Don Sutton of hitters, a guy who eventually makes it on sheer volume. It could happen, but advanced metrics don’t help him. He accumulated surprisingly modest wins above replacement value during his career and his JAWS average of 49 falls 9.1 short of the average of right fielders already inducted. Sheff’s average is worse than those of Bobby (not Barry) Bonds, Reggie Smith and Dwight Evans, none of whom is in. With more than 500 home runs, a career batting average over .290 and an OPS over .900, Sheff passes the eye test, at least for me. He might begin to build support after the current wave of stars passes. For now, he just has to hang around.

Coming in Part 2: The final fifteen

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May 6, 2012

Rockies’ pitching staff in disarray

By Dave Krieger

Actually, disarray may be too mild a word for the state of the Rockies’ pitching staff after it blew early leads of 5-0 and 6-0 on consecutive nights against the Braves, scoring seventeen runs in two games and losing them both.

“That’s the worst game of the year for us,” manager Jim Tracy said after the second, Saturday night’s 13-9 throwback to the early days of baseball at altitude.

By the time it was over, the Rocks’ team earned-run average had ballooned to 5.06, worst in the National League. Esmil Rogers, who allowed five earned runs in an inning and a third, saw his ERA soar to 8.36. Edgmer Escalona is at 8.53.

“Our pitching, as I mentioned last night, it’s got to be better than what we’re seeing right now,” Tracy said in the understatement of the soggy evening at Coors Field. “It’s unacceptable. That’s the best way I can describe it.”

Generally inclined to defend his players to a fault, Tracy was critical of Rogers and Rex Brothers for lack of consistency out of the bullpen, just as he had torched Jhoulys Chacin and Guillermo Moscoso recently for short, ineffective starts.

And it’s not as though all this trouble is in the rear view. Before Saturday night’s debacle, the club was forced to abandon plans to bring Jeremy Guthrie off the disabled list for Tuesday’s game in San Diego, meaning Tracy had to tell reporters he didn’t know who would start either Tuesday’s or Wednesday’s game there. At the moment, he has three healthy starters, one of whom is 49 years old and couldn’t hold leads of 6-0 and 8-3 on Saturday.

That, of course, would be Jamie Moyer, who became the oldest player to get a hit in a big league game Saturday since 50-year-old Minnie Minoso got one for the White Sox in 1976. Heartwarming as this tale is, Moyer is trying to get batters out at Coors Field with a “fastball” clocked at 77 miles per hour, which is slower than most major league changeups. Saturday, he managed to do it for four innings before everything unraveled.

“The wheels fell off,” he said afterward. “Solo home runs usually don’t beat you, but they just chipped away, chipped away. I couldn’t get an out in the sixth. I don’t have an answer for you right now.”

After giving up two solo homers and a single to open the sixth, Moyer departed with an 8-5 lead and one runner aboard. By the time Rogers was finished pouring kerosene on the brush fire, the score was tied and the bases were loaded. By the time Brothers departed two outs later, the Braves led 12-8.

The fact that the Rocks are counting on Moyer at all is evidence of the implosion of their plans for this year’s pitching staff. Coming off Tommy John surgery and old enough to be most of his teammates’ father, Moyer was a non-roster invitee to spring training, the longest of long shots. The Rockies had nine starters ahead of him when pitchers and catchers reported in February.

After trading Ubaldo Jimenez for three pitchers from Cleveland, Seth Smith for two pitchers from Oakland and Chris Iannetta for a pitcher from the L.A. Angels, it looked as though they’d have enough starters to staff both the big league club and the Triple-A affiliate in Colorado Springs. Instead, it’s as if they all caught some awful, contagious disease.

Josh Outman, one of the pitchers from Oakland, got hurt. Guillermo Moscoso, the other pitcher from Oakland, was ineffective. So were Tyler Chatwood, the pitcher from the Angels, and Alex White, one of the pitchers from Cleveland. Only one of these four had to pitch well enough to bump Moyer from consideration. None of them did.

Jhoulys Chacin, the Rockies’ winningest pitcher last year, showed up out of shape and pitched to an ERA of 7.30 before being shipped out. Guthrie, the fitness freak obtained from Baltimore who rides a bicycle to the ballpark, had some sort of chain problem that crashed his bike, leaving him with a shoulder injury and a trip to the disabled list.

So here they are, with two healthy starters under the age of forty-nine — Juan Nicasio and rookie Drew Pomeranz — and just nine quality starts in twenty-six games, fewest in the National League. The bullpen, which started well, has been called upon way too much and is already fried. There are no quick fixes, either. If there were, you can bet the Yankees and Red Sox would have bought them up already.

The good news is Nicasio and Pomeranz pitch the next two. Each went at least six innings in his last start, which makes them marathon men in comparison to the rest of the Rockies’ staff.

The bad news is nobody is quite sure what happens after that. Christian Friedrich, the Rocks’ first-round draft pick in 2008, last pitched at Triple-A on Friday, which would make the timing right for Wednesday’s start in San Diego. He wasn’t exactly lights out, giving up five runs, three earned, in five and two-thirds innings, but the Rocks don’t have a lot of options. His overall ERA of 3.00 in thirty innings isn’t bad, particularly for the Pacific Coast League.

White last pitched for the Sky Sox on Tuesday, managing just four and two-thirds innings. Outman is on his way back from an oblique injury and a long way from being ready to go deep into a game as a starter. Chacin and Moscoso were just recently banished to Colorado Springs because they pitched so poorly.

So while Tracy declined to speculate, the options include Carlos Torres, recently called up from Triple-A to be a long relief man, and Friedrich. But stay tuned. Television analyst George Frazier and his son, Parker, now at Double-A Tulsa, might be options by the time the team arrives in San Diego.

All of this is having the depressing effect you might expect on the rest of the clubhouse. The Rocks are tied for second in the National League in runs, but when you score eight and nine in consecutive games and lose them both, that’s not much consolation.

“It’s hard when you go down like this after scoring six runs early in the game and feeling excited when things are going well early in the game,” said Carlos Gonzalez, who had four hits Saturday to raise his team-leading batting average to .323.

“Everything just blew up in the middle of the game. We just have to hold the other team and continue to score runs if we need to. It’s difficult. It’s a tough loss and I’m really tired of saying the same things over and over. We need to figure it out and just try to get that ‘W’.”

Rockies management might be forgiven if this were an isolated run of bad luck. After all, Moscoso made twenty-one starts for Oakland last season and pitched to an ERA of 3.38. Outman made nine more. Chatwood made twenty-five for the Angels. The Rockies have gotten two forgettable starts from Moscoso and none from the others.

But this organization has been struggling to assemble a competent pitching staff for years, and it has made some whopper mistakes with pitchers early in the the draft, most notably selecting Greg Reynolds with the second overall pick in 2006, in the process passing on Clayton Kershaw and Tim Lincecum, now the aces of two of their rivals in the National League West. At some point, you have to ask whether the existing management is capable of judging pitching talent, whether in the draft or the trade and free agent markets. Pitching at altitude poses unique difficulties, but you can’t do worse than last in the league.

Of course, those organizational questions are not Tracy’s concern at the moment. He just needs to find somebody — anybody — who can get people out. Preferably this week.

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April 9, 2012

A little early to panic: Thoughts on the Rockies’ first series

By Dave Krieger

On Twitter, the modern version of Morse code, RIGHT NOW is all that really matters. Thus, from the first weekend of baseball’s new season, we get:

* Trading Jason Hammel was a huge mistake by the Rockies because he had the best start of his career in his Orioles debut, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning.

* The Red Sox stink again, just like last fall when they blew a sure playoff berth. Shows what the experts know.

* The Mets are awesome.

* The Rockies’ roster is a joke, what was Dan O’Dowd thinking, and Jim Tracy still overmanages.

Slight exaggerations, granted, but I did receive these tweets, verbatim, after the Rocks lost two out of three in Houston:

“Offense overrated.”

“So far, Rockies are who critics thought they were.”

After three games. Out of 162. So let’s take a step back and remember a few things. Last year, the Rocks came out of the gate 11-2 and finished April at 17-8. They were under .500 by the end of May (25-29) on their way to a desultory 73-win season.

This is where the level-headed writer is supposed to urge fans to wait for a statistically significant sample size, but in two of the past five seasons, there has been no such thing for the Rockies.

In 2010, they had a .554 winning percentage, on pace for 90 wins, through 148 games, which seems like a pretty good sample size. Then they lost 13 of their last 14 to finish 83-79 (.512). So a team that looked good for much of the season turned out to be mediocre.

In 2007, as you may recall, exactly the opposite happened. The Rocks had a .514 winning percentage through 148 games, barely above average, then won 13 out of 14 (14 out of 15 if you count the one-game playoff with San Diego; 21 out of 22 if you could the NLDS and NLCS), to finish the regular season 89-73. So a team that looked mediocre for much of the season turned out to be pretty good.

All of which is to say sometimes you can’t tell with the Rockies even when you’ve watched them all summer. So one weekend in April is probably not enough basis for any significant conclusions. But let’s knock down a few misconceptions anyway:

* Jamie Moyer is not the No. 2 starter, even though he pitched the second game. You might think this wouldn’t need to be explained to anyone paying even casual attention, but apparently it does. Moyer, who throws nothing but junk because he’s . . . well, because he’s 49 years old . . .  was inserted in the rotation between hard throwers Jeremy Guthrie and Juan Nicasio in hopes he would serve as a change of pace. It may have worked, although not for him. After hitting against him Saturday, the Astros were largely lost against Nicasio’s heat Sunday. Starting Moyer in Houston also gives him one less start at altitude, where one winces at the prospects.

In any case, Moyer is the fifth starter, and a temporary one at that. The first four starters are Guthrie, Nicasio, Drew Pomeranz and Jhoulys Chacin. When Jorge De La Rosa is ready to return from Tommy John surgery — early June, the Rocks hope — he’ll take the fifth spot and Moyer’s grand Reminiscence Tour will be over.

Moyer made the club only because four younger candidates for the temporary fifth starter role — Guillermo Moscoso, Tyler Chatwood, Josh Outman and Alex White — failed to win the job in the spring. That’s disappointing, but if any of them starts pitching well, either in the minor leagues or from the bullpen, he can take Moyer’s spot any time.

* The fact that Pomeranz is not yet on the 25-man roster does not prove Rockies management is demented. Pomeranz, the fifth pick of the 2010 draft and the central prize of the Ubaldo Jimenez trade, pitched 101 innings in the minors last year and 18.1 in the majors. That’s . . . give me a minute to warm up the calculator — 119.1 innings pitched. Crunching the numbers on young pitchers who have run into arm trouble, the Rocks conclude that one red flag is a big jump in innings pitched from one year to the next.

If Pomeranz is as good as he looks — his minor league ERA last year was 1.78 — he would pitch 200 innings or more as a regular member of the rotation. The Rocks don’t want that. In fact, they don’t want him to pitch many more than 150. How to do that?

Well, treat him like a fifth starter, even though he’ll probably be their ace in short order. Skip him the first time around, since a day off allows them to go with four starters twice through the rotation. His scheduled start at Double A Tulsa is to keep him on schedule, but it should be a short one. I’m still suggesting you get tickets for Sunday, April 15, his first scheduled start of the season at Coors Field.

* The reason Jonathan Herrera is on the roster is not that he’s friends with Carlos Gonzalez. He, Chris Nelson and Eric Young Jr. may seem like way too many of the same sort of ineffectual player, but there’s one big difference: Rockies management doesn’t want to see either Nelson or Young playing shortstop or second base if it’s not an emergency. That means Herrera is the only defensive replacement for Troy Tulowitzki or Marco Scutaro that doesn’t make the brass cringe. Rockies fans love to hate Herrera because he doesn’t hit much, but inasmuch as the Rocks have committed four errors in three games, all by infielders and one costing them Sunday’s game, they probably want more defense, not less.

* Yes, admittedly, third base is still a black hole. While studly prospect Nolan Arenado begins the season at Tulsa (batting .533 through four games with an OPS of 1.344) the Rocks hope that either Nelson or Jordan Pacheco proves capable of being a placeholder. Each made a costly throwing error in Houston, Pacheco’s arguably costing them Sunday’s game, and they were a combined 1-for-11 at the plate.

If it makes you feel any better, Ian Stewart committed one of those sleepy Ian Stewart errors — dropping a ball as he transferred it from his glove to his hand — for the Cubs, although he is 2-for-8 with a run scored and an RBI through three games in Chicago.

But, hey, that ship has sailed. Stewart hit .156 last season and after eight years in the organization, the Rocks moved on, exchanging him for outfielder Tyler Colvin, another former first-round pick in need of a fresh start. One of three things is going to happen at the hot corner:

1. Nelson or Pacheco takes hold of the position, hits enough to stay in the lineup and learns how to throw to first.

2. Neither takes hold of the position and the Rocks, desperate, call up Brandon Wood from Triple A Colorado Springs, who is 4-for-14 through four games (.286) and hasn’t made an error yet.

3. Neither takes hold of the position and the Rocks, desperate, notice Arenado is batting over .500, figure he’ll be old enough to drink legally any day (his 21st birthday is a week from today), throw caution to the wind and call him up.

Even while losing the series in Houston, the Rocks saw some encouraging signs. Guthrie and Nicasio both gave them quality starts, pitching seven innings apiece. Rookie catcher Wilin Rosario hit a towering home run in his first start, confirming the power he demonstrated in spring training. The bats haven’t heated up yet, but newcomer Michael Cuddyer had five hits in his first series in purple and black.

But the main point I want to make is it’s only three games. The Yankees are 0-3. So are the Red Sox. The Orioles are 3-0, which is the biggest tell of all. So do what the Rocks did last night. Put the Houston series in the rearview and enjoy today’s home Opening Day.

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March 31, 2012

The good, the bad and the ugly of Rockies camp

By Dave Krieger

The Rockies open their season Friday in Houston and their roster is shaping up to be better than many of the experts are predicting.

Yes, I know. I’m always optimistic about the Rocks. Still, there are lots of good signs as spring training winds down. A few not-so-good signs, too, it’s true. So let’s break it down:

The Good

Wilin Rosario. Wow. The 23-year-old Dominican catcher with 56 big league at-bats has been the breakout story of the spring, collecting 18 hits in 39 at-bats through Thursday’s games, including a club-leading three home runs. He hit one rocket blast against San Francisco that one veteran talent scout called “freakish, absolutely freakish.”

He’s batting .462 with an OPS of 1.271. Sure, it’s a small sample, but the question going into camp was whether he was ready for the bigs or needed a year of seasoning at Triple-A, having played at Double-A last season. Barring a last-minute injury, not only will he make the big league club, if he keeps hitting like this he’ll end up sharing the catching duties with veteran Ramon Hernandez.

Juan Nicasio. The feel-good story of the spring, Nicasio has bounced back from the broken C1 vertebra he suffered last Aug. 5 after being hit in the right temple by a line drive off the bat of Washington Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond. In 23.1 innings pitched this spring, he has struck out 21 and walked 5, pitching to an earned-run average of 3.09.

As a power pitcher and a strike-thrower, he will cap a wonderful comeback story by coming north as a member of the starting rotation, probably pitching the final game of the opening three-game series in Houston. His fastball makes him good as he is. If he develops a change-up and breaking ball to go with it, he could be dominant. And because he isn’t afraid to throw strikes, the Rocks believe he’ll pitch deep into games, giving their bullpen a break.

Jorge De La Rosa. Nobody’s talking about him because he won’t be ready for the start of the season, but De La Rosa’s comeback from Tommy John surgery is right on track. The training staff, being conservative, projects a July return, but privately the Rocks believe he could be back by early June.

That changes the dynamic around the fifth starter question that has dominated camp. Whoever it is, that fifth starter might need to make only nine or ten starts before De La Rosa is ready to take his place. He would give the Rocks two power lefties, something very few big league clubs can boast.

Drew Pomeranz. Don’t be alarmed if the prize from the Ubaldo Jimenez trade gets skipped the first time around the Rockies rotation. After pitching just 101 innings last season, all but 11 of them in the minors, the 23-year-old, 6-foot-5 power lefty will be brought along carefully. The Rocks don’t want too dramatic a rise in his innings count for fear of the long-term effects. Because of the off day following their April 9 home opener, the Rocks can go with four starters until April 15, a Sunday afternoon home game against the Diamondbacks. If everything goes as planned — and that’s never a sure thing a week away from the opener — get your tickets to that one. This guy is going to be fun to watch develop.

Pomeranz has shown a nasty side this spring that augurs well for his chances to become a dominant big league starter. One snapshot: The other day, against the Angels, Brandon Wood was struggling at second base and allowed two base runners to reach that probably should have been outs (spring training being spring training, both were ruled hits). Pomeranz responded by striking out Howard Kendrick, shattering Albert Pujols’ bat on a ground out to third, popping up Torii Hunter on a 2-2 pitch and staring him down as he walked off the mound. When was the last time the Rocks had a pitcher like that? In 11 spring training innings, his ERA is 0.82.

Jamie Moyer. Who doesn’t love this story? A 49-year-old coming off elbow surgery is now very likely to make the Rockies’ starting rotation coming out of camp, barring the physical setbacks that a 49-year-old can always suffer. In part, this is because the other candidates — Guillermo Moscoso and Tyler Chatwood — have been underwhelming. But it’s also because Moyer has been good — a 2.77 ERA and 11 hits surrendered in 13 innings.

It’s also because, sandwiched between the power arms of Nicasio and Jeremy Guthrie, Moyer can provide an interesting change of pace. He tops out at 80 miles per hour these days, with his breaking and off-speed stuff sometimes not reaching 70. And because of De La Rosa’s expected return, the Rocks wouldn’t be looking at him for 30 starts; more like half that many. Moyer’s soft stuff at Coors Field does make you wince a little in anticipation — he’s been rocked in two of his three starts there — but the Rocks have other options if he blows up. And if he can get credit for a win somewhere along the way, he’ll be the oldest man to do it.

Tyler Colvin. The former first-round draft pick by the Cubs became part of an exchange of disappointments over the winter when the Rocks acquired him in exchange for Ian Stewart. Trying to show off power he doesn’t have, he batted .150 a year ago. As soon as the Rocks acquired him, they went to work overhauling his swing. The results so far: a .365 batting average and .948 OPS with 12 RBIs in 52 at-bats. With Charlie Blackmon out with turf toe, Colvin has locked up the fourth outfielder job and provides an insurance policy in center field.

Michael Cuddyer. The veteran outfielder obtained from the Twins to provide run production and maturity has shown up so far as everything the Rocks were looking for, and a bit more. Two recent snapshots: Against the Giants, Mike Fontenot failed to clear the second base bag turning a double play and Cuddyer blew him up sliding in. Against the Angels, he hit a routine three-hop ground ball to short and turned it into a bang-bang play at first by busting it down the line.

In fact, he and Colvin have impressed enough that the Rocks now believe they can keep 38-year-old Todd Helton fresh at first by sprinkling in a liberal dose of lineups with Cuddyer at first and Colvin in right.

The Bad

Dexter Fowler. Remember the guy from the first half of last year? He’s back. Fowler was batting .118 in 51 at-bats through Thursday’s games, including sixteen strikeouts, two walks and one stolen base. Not exactly leadoff man numbers. So 36-year-old Marco Scutaro — batting all of .176 himself this spring — is probably the club’s leadoff man coming north.

This is a make-or-break year for Fowler with the Rockies. If he can hit his career average of .262, his defensive excellence in center field makes him worth running out there every day. But his long swing seems to make him susceptible to these long offensive funks. If his spring at the plate spills over into the regular season, the Rocks won’t hesitate to deploy Colvin in center.

Jhoulys Chacin. The numbers aren’t terrible, but the Rocks were looking for the 24-year-old Venezuelan right-hander to take another step forward this year and they haven’t seen it yet. He arrived at camp with biceps soreness and swiftly developed a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand. Rockies fans remember a couple of other pitchers who arrived at camp last year with what seemed like minor issues — Ubaldo Jimenez and Aaron Cook — and although the initial problems went away, they were a sign of things to come.

Chacin’s main problem is not throwing enough strikes, and that hasn’t improved so far this spring. Still, he has a lot of talent and the Rocks aren’t relying on him to anchor the starting staff, as they did last year after the Jimenez trade. For now, he’s penciled in to throw the home opener, four games in.

Rafael Betancourt. The 36-year-old closer — he’ll turn 37 at the end of April — hasn’t been effective this spring, but it’s a very small sample size and nobody seems concerned. With Matt Belisle and Rex Brothers poised to set up, the Rocks believe they’ll be OK in any event, but they are counting on Betancourt to return to form.

The Ugly

Casey Blake. It was sad to see the widely-admired veteran reach an age (38) that prevented him from ever really competing for the third base job, but it’s not as if it was unexpected. The Rocks signed him to a non-guaranteed contract for just that reason. He couldn’t get on the field for a while, and when he did he showed virtually no range at third. So he was released, leaving Chris Nelson and Jordan Pacheco to share the third base duties until Nolan Arenado, who turns 21 in April and will start at Double-A Tulsa, is ready.

Eric Young Jr. As usual, Young has been a disruptive dynamo offensively, batting .310 with six steals. “He’s like an automatic double,” says one observer. Unfortunately, the Rocks can’t find a place to play him in the field where his defense isn’t cringe-worthy. In the outfield, where he’s gotten most of his time, he still takes bad routes to balls that turn outs into hits. The Rocks love his energy and work ethic, but they can’t figure out what to do with him. He’s out of options and unless the club wants to come north with a short pitching staff, it will have to look for a deal or try to get him through waivers.

The Roster

To the extent anything can be said to be a lock a week before the regular season begins, the locks for the bullpen look to be Betancourt, Belisle, Brothers, Esmil Rogers and Josh Outman. If we assume the Opening Day starting staff consists of Guthrie, Nicasio, Chacin, Pomeranz and Moyer (with Moyer probably pitching the second game of the season to slot him between the hard-throwing Guthrie and Nicasio), that leaves six guys competing for two remaining spots: Moscoso, Chatwood, Alex White, Edgmer Escalona, Matt Reynolds and Josh Roenicke. All have options except for Roenicke.

Rockies brass is split on whether White is best suited to start or relieve in the long run, so they might bring him north as a member of the bullpen to check him out in that role. In that case, Moscoso and Chatwood would probably be sent down to Triple A Colorado Springs to continue starting and the last bullpen spot would likely go to Escalona or Reynolds.

The infielders seem likely to be a platoon of Nelson and Pacheco at third, Troy Tulowitzki at short, Scutaro at second and Todd Helton and Jason Giambi at first. Jonathan Herrera has had an excellent spring and seems likely to make it as a utility man. He and Nelson might seem redundant, but the Rocks are not high on Nelson’s defense anywhere but third, so Herrera would be the primary backup for both Scutaro and Tulowitzki.

The outfield is set with Carlos Gonzalez, Fowler, Colvin and Cuddyer.

The catchers are Hernandez, Rosario and Pacheco in a pinch.

That’s 12 pitchers, six infielders, four outfielders, two catchers and one infielder/catcher for a total of 25. Things could change in the next week, of course, but from here, that looks like a roster that could surprise, particularly if the young members of the starting staff look as good when the games begin to count as they have in spring training. This team should hit, and it should play pretty good defense. As usual, the Rocks’ fortunes should rise or fall with the pitching.

Almost time to play ball.

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