This morning, the Rockies traded away Jason Hammel, a starter who has posted relatively high BABIPs over most of his career. While his .280 BABIP last year doesn’t look so bad, the distribution of when those hits came (.272 BABIP with bases empty, .291 BABIP with men on, .300 with RISP) – along with the .327 overall mark he posted in the prior two seasons – led to the Rockies souring on his abilities and shifting him to the bullpen in August. Hammel was just the latest in a string of pitchers who have fallen out of favor with the Rockies due to high BABIPs, as the team traded away Ubaldo Jimenez and Felipe Paulino during stretches of allowing hits last year, and had decided not to bring back Jeff Francis last winter due to his proclivity for giving up base hits.

Eventually, though, the Rockies are going to have to realize that it’s not the pitchers, it’s the park. Here are the BABIPs for all pitchers at Coors Field for each of the last 10 years, and where that ranks relative to the other parks in that specific year.

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This is a trade that just doesn’t make sense to me:

The Rockies and Orioles are nearing an agreement that would send starter Jeremy Guthrie to Colorado, most likely for pitchers Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom, reports Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun. (MLB Trade Rumors)

Let me preface this by saying that I like Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Hammel more than most people probably do. After watching Guthrie pitch in the AL East for the past five seasons, I’ll be glad to see him go. Despite his underwhelming strikeout numbers and flyball tendencies, there are some nights where he pumps his fastball up around 95 MPH (with good movement) and can shred through opposing lineups. My eyes are overly optimistic on Guthrie, though, as the reality is that he’s a 32-year-old starter that doesn’t generate many whiffs and is only around a +2 win pitcher. He’s no ace, but he’s still a valuable pitcher to have.

The same can be said about Jason Hammel. Since being traded to the Rockies prior to the ’09 season, he has racked up +9 wins over three seasons. He comes with his share of question marks — his strikeout rate plummeted in 2011, and his ERA has always outpaced his peripherals due to a high BABIP — but considering he will be 29 years old this season, he has the potential to be better than Guthrie. His 4.37 career SIERA is better than anything Guthrie has posted over the past five years, so you can argue that the Orioles are getting an excellent buy-low starter in this deal. Whether Hammel lives up to that potential…well, we’ll see.

But here’s what I don’t understand: what do the Orioles and Rockies get out of this trade?

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It shouldn’t have been difficult for Kenny Lofton to find work after the 2007 season. He hit .296/.367/.414, played decent defense and tallied right around 3 WAR. He stole 23 of 30 bases, posted his first walk rate at 10 percent or higher since 2002, and managed to play in 136 games despite being 40 years old. His batting line was almost identical a year earlier with the Dodgers, and he posted 4 WAR a season before that with the Phillies. Age wasn’t slowing Lofton down, but as with any player that age, his performance could crater at any moment.

For that reason, teams were hesitant to offer Lofton a lucrative major league contract, if even for just one season. Though he was still potentially a very productive player, none of his offers made sense and he chose to retire. The Rays were interested but nothing materialized, and Lofton walked away after two seasons in which he averaged a .299/.364/.408 slash line, a .347 wOBA, 27 stolen bases and 2.2 WAR.

His forced retirement was indicative of a changing game. Players were being viewed under a different lens, and to most, guaranteeing a 40-year old a major league roster spot was too risky. Whether teams were off-base with that assessment of Lofton is certainly debatable, but it signified the end of a trend.

Older players couldn’t simply use their name power to get a guaranteed gig, and the teams that might have expressed interest are those the players likely wouldn’t consider to begin with. The choices left on the table were retirement or to accept a minor league deal and vie for a spot in spring training. At least four veterans, two of whom are going to the Hall of Fame, fit similar bills this offseason. Skills and remaining talent vary across the quintet, but they represent the type of player who would have been signed to a contract at this point no fewer than five or six years ago. Will any of Johnny Damon, Derrek Lee, Ivan Rodriguez, or Vladimir Guerrero latch on somewhere this year?

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This may seem odd, but Todd Coffey is one of my favorite relievers in baseball. I have this thing for middling, fringe-y relief pitcher — Casey Fossum has stolen my heart — and there’s just so much of Coffey to love. How can you not love a teddy bear like him, especially considering he’s an underrated asset?

Source: #Dodgers agree with Coffey on one-year, $1.3 million deal with club option, pending physical. #MLB

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 3, 2012

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Per the Urban Dictionary, the phrase “hot mess” means, “When ones thoughts or appearance are in a state of disarray, but they maintain an undeniable attractiveness or beauty.” When scouting Junior Lake during the Southern League playoffs, his game was part car wreck, but I simply could not help but be enamored with his tools. Rocket arm. Explosive hand speed. Plus runner. Other than the way he actually played baseball, there was nothing not to like.

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As Dave discussed yesterday, Nationals manager Davey Johnson is in favor of having Bryce Harper begin the season as his starting right fielder. This would undoubtedly affect Jayson Werth, since he is the incumbent right fielder.

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Baseball sometimes seems as if it is the most unchanging of the major sports. Maybe that is the case now, but as anyone (like me) with even a slight interest in baseball history knows, baseball has made changes in its rules many times over the years. That is part of the reason discussions about potential rule changes are interesting — they not only stimulate the mind grapes, but also have a basis in the real history of the game. Moreover, some of the ideas are not necessarily new, but involve a hypothetical return to yesteryear.

In the wake of the concerns about home run records being “tarnished” by PEDS and, horror of horrors, the designated hitter, it is worth remembering that the home run rules, like almost everything else, have not always been the same. Certain older rules cost some hitters home runs. However, some rules also gave players more home runs. It is the latter I want to discuss today as a possible rule change. What do you think? Would you be in favor of allowing what are not ground rule doubles to be ruled as home runs?

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After remaining relatively quiet all off-season, the Cleveland Indians have been busy in recent days. They signed Casey Kotchman to a one-year contract yesterday, and it appears they’re working away at locking up their young shortstop:

SS Asdrubal Cabrera in town and talking multiyear deal with #Indians. GM Chris Antonetti says deal must align “in value and term.”

— paul hoynes (@hoynsie) February 3, 2012

Asdrubal Cabrera is a bit of an enigma. It’s not that he’s a dark and mysterious character — although this leaves some room for debate — but that his performance over the past few years makes him a difficult player to project. He had a down year in 2010 after breaking his arm early in the season, but he was a +3 win player in both 2011 and 2009. In both of those years, though, there were some questionable spikes in his stats; his 2009 performance was helped along by an unsustainable .360 BABIP, and his 2011 “breakout” was fueled by a  dramatic increase in his homerun rate (13.3% HR/FB).

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This edition of the player-profile game is appearing at 11:30am Central Time because the author is an idiot.

As announced Wednesday, FanGraphs will once again be offering to the public its fantasy companion guide, The Second Opinion. We’ll have more details on the guide — set to be released on Monday — very shortly.

In the meantime, however, we’re playing the player-profile game I intoduced in these pages a couple offseasons ago.

The game is easy: one person (me, in this case) offers the text of single player profile, being careful to omit any proper names that might reveal the identity of the player in question. The other person (you, the reader) attempts to identify the player using only the details provided in the profile.

First reader to guess correctly (in the comments section below) gets a free copy of this year’s Second Opinion — approximately a $1000 value!

Today’s entry comes in form of three shorter profiles. To answer correctly, respondents must identify all three players.

Because of the difficulty of this round, multiple attempts are allowed. If no one has the correct answer by 1pm ET, we will select the closest answer.

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Much like fingerprints, no two off-seasons are exactly alike. Every year develops at its own pace and has its own quirks, and this year is certainly no exception. Multiple Scott Boras clients have signed one-year deals, hoping to get more interest next season. One of the top players on the market didn’t sign until late January. The Florida Marlins were one of the high-rollers at the Winter Meetings. And in the wake of Edwin Jackson signing with the Washington Nationals, we’re left with another oddity: an over-supply of starting pitchers in February.

At the moment, there are at least four pitchers available as a free agent or on the trade block:

Roy Oswalt (4.04 SIERA in 2011)
John Lannan (4.47 SIERA)
Jeff Niemann (3.79 SIERA) / Wade Davis (4.83 SIERA)
Kyle McClellan (4.36 SIERA)

Oswalt is easily the best free agent starter that has been available as late as February in a few years. John Maine was the best starter signed after February 1st last off-season, and Livan Hernandez and Chien-Ming Wang were the two hot February acquisitions back in 2010. And back in 2009, the list was just as paltry: Adam Eaton, Jorge Vazquez, Livan Hernandez, and Brett Tomko.

Come February, the trade market for starting pitchers is also normally bone dry. Dana Eveland was traded in early February of 2010, and the Rays traded away Jason Hammel in April of 2009. Outside of that, the only other significant starting pitchers to get traded this late in the off-season were Johan Santana and Erik Bedard back in 2008.

How many teams currently need starting pitching? The Red Sox certainly do, and it appears that the Orioles, Indians, Blue Jays, and Cardinals have all been searching to some degree. The Mets could also use to add a starter, right? But as we get down to the wire, it feels like there are fewer and fewer teams clamoring to add starting pitching, while the market for starters is (relatively speaking) flooded.

Of course, the market isn’t quite as straightforward as it looks. Oswalt doesn’t appear to want to sign with the Red Sox, and the Rays aren’t going to be willing to sell low or trade in-division with either Niemann or Davis. Meanwhile, Lannan and McClellan are both average-to-below-average pitchers that will be due a few million each this upcoming season.

Will this market end up being more favorable to teams interested in buying or selling starters? It’s difficult to say, but based on the recent past, this looks like an unusually strong buyers market.