Archive for Teams

Rockies hitters have always had a hard time producing above-average seasons once context is applied. As a team, the club has never compiled a season with a 100 wRC+. Outsized park factors continuously knock their stats down a few pegs, as do the adjustments hitters have to make to differing altitudes when the team hits the road. Even with that as a backdrop though, Dante Bichette’s 1999 season was an outlier for the ages — one that is not only historically notorious by itself, but helped the Colorado pitching staffs have one of the worst, if not the worst season in franchise history.

Bichette, who came to the Rockies in a trade requested by manager Don Baylor and executed hours after their 1992 expansion draft, was a fixture in the Colorado lineup for the franchise’s first seven seasons. He ranks fourth in the club’s annals in games played, and the only outfielder who has played more games than him in a Rockies uniform is Larry Walker. He ranks 10th in club history in wRC+ (minimum 1,000 plate appearances) and provided a bevy of memorable moments as one of the original Blake St. Bombers.

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Announcers and hitting coaches love to talk about hitting the ball to all fields, and especially hitting the ball to all fields with power. Not every elite hitter uses such an approach — Jose Bautista uses left field almost exclusively, for example. But Bautista’s way of hitting — pure pull power, with tons of fly balls — has it’s drawbacks; it is a finely tuned system available to a select few specimens.

After the 2010 season, it wasn’t clear Ryan Braun would become the elite power hitter suggested by his explosive 34-homer, .634 SLG, .310 ISO debut season. Every season after he came up, his ISO dipped by at least 34 points until he slugged just .501 with 25 homers in 2010. Braun was never the kind of pull power hitter Bautista embodies, but much of his power away from left field came in the form of doubles (45 in 2010), not home runs.

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Tuesday night, just before the Mariners started playing the Red Sox, ROOT Sports introduced a little graphic showing the Mariners’ record before and after the Ichiro trade, and showing the Yankees’ record before and after the Ichiro trade. If you’ve been paying any attention to baseball, which you probably have, you know that the Yankees haven’t been playing well lately, and you might know that the Mariners have. Why? If you’re a fan of correlation-to-causation alchemy, because of the Ichiro trade. Clearly, Ichiro is toxic. Alternatively, on July 19, the Yankees traded Dan Brewer to the Braves. That could be the problem. There are correlations everywhere. There are correlations everywhere.

Let’s assume, you and I, that it isn’t that simple. There are very complicated reasons behind the relative rise of the Mariners, and there are very complicated reasons behind the relative fall of the Yankees. We’ll stop talking about the Mariners now because they don’t have anything to do with the rest of this article, as we’re going to focus on the AL East. No matter the reasons, there’s no getting around what’s taken place. There’s no changing the standings as they are, and where once the Yankees had a massive lead over everyone else, Tuesday night they dropped into a tie. The Yankees woke up Wednesday without sole possession of first for the first time since June 12. (That was a very long time ago.) (Sort of.)

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Monday was an important day for the Chicago White Sox. After a weekend sweep at the hands of the Detroit Tigers left them in a tie atop the AL Central, they rebounded with a 4-2 win over the Minnesota Twins. Come nightfall, the White Sox once again had sole possession of first. Monday was a less important day for the Twins. The Twins are a bad team just trying not to finish last in the league. On any given day, they don’t have a whole lot at stake.

But Monday was an important day for one Twins player in particular. With one out in the top of the fifth, Jamey Carroll batted against Hector Santiago. Carroll worked a trademark long, annoying at-bat, and then he lined a 2-and-2 fastball just over the fence in left field. It wasn’t the first home run of Carroll’s career — in fact, it was the 13th — but it did snap the longest homerless drought in major-league baseball. Carroll hadn’t homered since August 2009, and while home runs in Chicago aren’t quite like home runs in Seattle or home runs in Oakland, we don’t award fractional homers. You either hit a home run or you didn’t, and Monday, Jamey Carroll hit a home run.

There to greet him in front of the dugout, appropriately enough, was Ben Revere.

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After seeing Jurickson Profar play in the South Atlantic League in mid-2011, I returned home and wrote a piece for the now defunct Roto Hardball discussing the teenage phenom as the best shortstop prospect in baseball. In fact, if asked to name the top five prospects I’ve ever scouted in person, Profar would be listed alongside Jason Heyward, Mike Stanton, Bryce Harper and Dylan Bundy.

Video after the jump

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Very recently, Dan Uggla was one of the better players in baseball. Two years ago, his 135 wRC+ put him in the same company as Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Adam Dunn, and Joe Mauer. He hit for average, he hit for power, he drew walks, and he faked it at second base well enough to provide a lot of value, averaging +4 WAR per season during his first five years in the big leagues.

Last year, Uggla looked lost for the first three months of the season, as he wasn’t drawing walks and his BABIPs were below .200 in each month from April through June. However, for as bad as his first half was, his second half was equally amazing, as his power spiked, his BABIP returned to normal, and he closed the year looking like the Dan Uggla of old. The overall line was down a bit from his years in Miami, but given how well he closed the season, it didn’t seem like an early decline was in his future.

However, there was some evidence of worrying trends, even while Uggla was killing the ball last summer, and this year, the continuation of those trends has cost him his job as the Braves starting second baseman.

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As I was flipping channels last night I managed to stumble on the Padres – Dodgers game. Andrew Werner, a 25 year-old rookie making only his third career start, was on the hill for the Padres. It only took me a few pitches to determine I should stick with the game for a little while.

Although the Dodgers would eventually win the game in extra-innings, Werner pitched a great game as his final line can attest to (6 IP, 8Ks, 1BB). And although he posted an equally dominant performance in his previous game against the Atlanta Braves (6 IP, 7Ks, 0BBs), the way he went about shutting down the Dodgers was quite different.

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Drew Pomeranz takes the mound today for the Colorado Rockies. The 23-year-old lefty came into the 2012 season with Matt Moore expectations, but so far has Jamie Moyer results. On Tuesday, he takes the bump aiming for a solid 4.0 IP against the playoff contending Atlanta Braves, and if he hopes to salvage anything from his forgettable rookie season, he will need to get his secondary pitches working for him.

Pomeranz has improved over the last two months, as his K-rate and BB-rate have both moved in the right direction:

But in order for his success to grow, Pomeranz will need to dramatically alter his approach, and that starts with his curveball.
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There have been two players named Betancourt throughout the course of major-league history, and it just so happens that both of them are current. Far more has been written about Yuniesky Betancourt than Rafael Betancourt, even though Rafael has been around longer, and even though Yuniesky is terrible. But then, that’s kind of the reason. Yuniesky wasn’t supposed to be terrible, but he became terrible, famously terrible, and he kept getting jobs. Rafael is a reliever who has been quietly effective for relatively unpopular teams for the better part of a decade. It never didn’t make sense that more should be written about Yuniesky. But some should be written about Rafael, because it turns out he’s more interesting than you probably thought.

Full disclosure: I’m obsessed to a minor degree with Rafael Betancourt. I find him to be absolutely fascinating for reasons that might not appeal to the average baseball fan. There’s something particular about the way that Betancourt goes to work. He hasn’t hit a batter since his rookie season way back in 2003, many hundreds of appearances ago. That’s crazy, and I’ve written about that elsewhere. But that’s a symptom. It’s not that Betancourt tries not to hit batters; it’s that he pitches in such a way that hit batsmen are almost impossible. Especially, specifically, against lefties.

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For a little while, Toronto was showing the makings of a playoff contender. An excellent offense built around Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion and a surprisingly solid starting rotation built around Brandon Morrow kept the Blue Jays in games for the first half of the season. But the injuries piled up, particularly on the pitching end, prompting inquiries into record-setting injury paces.

And so it’s no surprise the Blue Jays own one of the league’s worst starting rotations with respect to WAR (+4.5, 26th) and ERA (4.81, 25th). From beneath this heap of pain and misery, however, one bright spot has emerged. Rotation replacement Carlos Villanueva continued to groove as a starter Thursday against the Rays, tossing six shutout innings with seven strikeouts and just six baserunners allowed.

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