Dave Magadan was a productive big-league hitter — he logged a 117 wRC+ from 1986 to 2001 — and he’s followed up his playing career with several stints as a hitting coach. In that role with the Colorado Rockies for each of the past two seasons, Magadan previously plied his trade with the San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox, Texas Rangers, and Arizona Diamondbacks. His current situation is arguably the most challenging he’s faced. Having Coors Field as a home venue is a mixed blessing, and it goes without saying that today’s offensive environment is anything but ideal. Magadan has a boatload of experience and expertise, but he’s also got his work cut out for him.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with the fact that the game has changed — hitting has changed — since your playing days.

Dave Magadan: “I guess I’m a little biased. I like guys that control the strike zone and hit for a good average. It’s gone so far in the other direction, where guys don’t mind striking out 180 times as long as they’re hitting the ball out of the park. But there’s always a place for guys who give you good at-bats, get on base, consistently hit the ball hard, and aren’t overmatched by a certain type of pitcher. And there are guys like that in the game, but they’re just not as plentiful as when I played.”

Laurila: How much of the balls-in-play issue is swing plane, and the inability to handle the elevated fastball?

Magadan: “We could do about two hours on that, right? I mean, there is so much malpractice out there in the world of baseball. Not big-league hitting coaches, but guys who are trying to make names for themselves being hitting gurus, teaching kids to swing up and create that launch angle that that is so deceptive. Let’s forget about the swing plane; let’s just talk about contact point. To hit the ball in the air, you have to hit the ball out in front, but when you’re consistently trying to create that contact point, you’re going to swing and miss. You’re going to chase breaking balls, you’re going to chase changeups, you’re not going to be able to hit the late-action pitches. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

LaTroy Hawkins was just about as well-traveled as they come. The 6-foot-5, 220-pound righty spent 21 years in the majors, pitching for 11 different teams (not counting a return engagement in Colorado) in 44 different ballparks. Generally a setup man (though he did spend time closing), he never made an All-Star team, but he did pitch in the postseason five times with four different franchises, including a World Series with the Rockies. He stuck around long enough to become the 16th pitcher to appear in 1,000 games, and today ranks 10th all-time:

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For better or worse, I’m a completist. In 17 years of analyzing Hall of Fame ballots using my JAWS system, I’ve never let a candidate pass without comment, no matter how remote his chance of election. From the brothers Alomar to the youngest Alou and the elder Young, I’ve covered ’em all. Thus it’s my sworn duty to tackle the minor candidates on the 2021 BBWAA ballot. I count 18 major ones — the 14 holdovers plus Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, Torii Hunter, and Barry Zito (the only newcomer to win a major award) — leaving seven candidates for this series.

To be eligible for election, a player must appear in games in at least 10 major league seasons, with a career that ended at least five calendar years ago, and then be nominated by at least two members of a six-member screening committee — a step that can produce some arbitrary results, as I’ve noted in the past, though their leaving the younger Young off this year’s ballot given his meager numbers and high-profile mistakes on and off the field was merited. Getting this far is a victory unto itself, but these candidates aren’t going any further; given that the seven players have combined for a single mention on the 36 ballots published so far, it’s fair to say that none is going to get the 5% necessary to remain eligible, let alone the 75% needed for election. Just the same, these one-and-done candidates were accomplished players who deserve their valedictory, and in this series, they’ll get it.

Our first batch covers a pair of outfielders who seemed to take forever to secure major league jobs, though both wound up helping several teams reach the playoffs before injuries eroded their performances and led them to walk away in the their mid-30s. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Colorado Rockies.

Batters

This is one of the worst teams in the majors — certainly the worst that seems blissfully unaware of that fact. The Rockies have two position players they can count on to be good, and one of them, Nolan Arenado, is no guarantee to start the 2021 season with Colorado. Even after a weak 60-game stretch in a year everyone would like to forget, if the Rockies do shop Arenado, they will get significant interest in the market. But would they actually close a deal? I’m not sure they will be realistic about the effect his contract and the unknown of an opt-out will have on trade offers. Regardless, ZiPS expects a bounceback season as he continues to make his mid-career Hall of Fame case.

If the Rockies do trade Arenado — and maybe even if they don’t — it would be hard for them to avoid trading Trevor Story if they actually do go for a full-on rebuild. Colorado has had poor fortune with some of its top offensive prospects, but Story has been one of the best kinds of surprises: a player who got far less press as a prospect than others in the organization (despite being a high draft pick) but kept hitting as he went up the ladder, got to the majors first and left the competition scrambling to find other positions. One of those players, Brendan Rodgers, is at risk of going the way of Ryan McMahon, in that he’s done everything he could in the minors to earn a chance in the majors only to find the team casually disinterested in distributing the necessary playing time.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2019 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Baseball at high altitude is weird. The air is less dense, so pitched balls break less and batted balls carry farther — conditions that greatly favor the hitters. Meanwhile, reduced oxygen levels make breathing harder, physical exertion more costly, and recovery times longer. Ever since major league baseball arrived in Colorado in 1993, no player put up with more of this, the pros and cons of playing at a mile-high elevation, than Todd Helton.

A Knoxville native whose career path initially led to the gridiron, ahead of Peyton Manning on the University of Tennessee quarterback depth chart, Helton shifted his emphasis back to baseball in college and spent his entire 17-year career (1997-2013) playing for the Rockies. “The Toddfather” was without a doubt the greatest player in franchise history, its leader in most major offensive counting stat categories. He made five All-Star teams, won three Gold Gloves, a slash line triple crown — leading in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage in the same season — and served as a starter and a team leader for two playoff teams, including Colorado’s only pennant winner. He posted batting averages above .300 12 times, on-base percentages above .400 nine times, and slugging percentages above .500 eight times. He mashed 40 doubles or more seven times and 30 homers or more six times; twice, he topped 400 total bases, a feat that only one other player (Sammy Sosa) has repeated in the post-1960 expansion era. He drew at least 100 walks in a season five times, yet only struck out 100 times or more once; nine times, he walked more than he struck out.

Because Helton did all of this while spending half of his time at Coors Field, many dismiss his accomplishments without a second thought. That he did so with as little self-promotion as possible — and scarcely more exposure — while toiling for a team that had the majors’ sixth-worst record during his tenure makes such dismissal that much easier, as does the drop-off at the tail end of his career, when injuries, most notably chronic back woes, had sapped his power. He was “The Greatest Player Nobody Knows,” as the New York Times called him in 2000, a year when he flirted with a .400 batting average into September.

Thanks to Helton’s staying power, and to advanced statistics that adjust for the high-offense environment in a particularly high-scoring period in baseball history, we can more clearly see that he ranked among his era’s best players, and has credentials that wouldn’t be out of place in Cooperstown. But like former teammate Larry Walker, a more complete player who spent just 59% of his career with the Rockies, Helton’s candidacy started slowly. He received just 16.5% of the vote in his first year, 3.8% less than Walker did in his 2011 debut, but thanks to a less crowded ballot — and perhaps Walker’s coattails, as he jumped 22 percentage points and was elected in his final year of eligibility — Helton rose to 29.2% last year, making the fourth-largest gain of any returning candidate. Still, he’s got a ways to go before he can join his former teammate in the Hall of Fame.

Read the rest of this entry »

Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I spent the summer watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. This is the final divisional installment of those thoughts, as well as a general recap. The other divisions can be found here: National League East, NL Central, American League East, Central, and West.

Below is my assessment of the National League West, covering players who have appeared in big league games. The results of these final 2020 changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on the updated Board, though I provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, Trevor Bauer made a rather emphatic statement not only on behalf of his team, which is in the playoff hunt, but also for himself in the National League Cy Young race. Bauer pitched eight innings, striking out 12 against one walk and just a single run as the Reds moved above .500 to move into the eighth and final playoff spot heading into today’s action. Meanwhile, though it’s not yet clear if Jacob deGrom or Yu Darvish will get another outing to stake their claims, but Corbin Burnes pitches tonight against the Cardinals. Below you will find the NL WAR leaders among pitchers through last night’s contests:

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With a 2-9 stretch from September 8-19, the Rockies plummeted below .500 for the season and faded from the playoff picture. Though they’re still technically alive-ish in the race for the NL’s eighth seed, they’ve squandered their 11-3 start, and their Playoff Odds are down to 1.7%; they need to overtake at least four teams in the season’s five remaining days. Their task will be that much harder without Nolan Arenado, who last played on Saturday and who was placed on the Injured List on Monday with what the Rockies described as left AC joint inflammation and a left shoulder bone bruise. His season is over.

Listening to the broadcast of the Rockies-Giants game on Monday night, one of the announcers — I forget which side it was, as I was in the midst of flipping around MLB.TV — noted that Arenado has been so durable that “the last time he was on the Injured List, it wasn’t even called the Injured List” or words to that effect. In 2014, he missed 37 games after fracturing the middle finger of his left hand while sliding head-first into second base. From 2015-19, he averaged 157 games per year from 2015-19, playing more games (787) than all but three players, namely Eric Hosmer (795), Manny Machado (793), and Paul Goldschmidt (791).

Arenado initially injured his shoulder during the season’s fifth game, on July 29, while making the kind of diving stop of a Stephen Piscotty groundball that has typified the seven-time Gold Glove winner’s career:

Read the rest of this entry »

Before I say anything, take a look at this Raimel Tapia sac fly, which scored Matt Kemp in the bottom of the ninth at Coors Field last night.

It is incredible how the stakes of professional sports manage to be world-shakingly massive and completely meaningless at the very same time. At stake in any given baseball game is millions of dollars of investment, millions of hours of training, the hopes and dreams of millions of fans, the dedication of entire lifetimes. And yet, the only thing physically at stake is how, exactly, a small leather ball will travel through space: whether it will leave the stadium, or land in the catcher’s glove; whether it will be caught, or hit the grass; whether it will stay firm in the grip of a player’s hand, or slide through it, errant, to go off in some unintended direction. If these physical stakes were not so small, to fail when so much is riding on one’s ability to succeed would be, I imagine, unbearably devastating. But even the most horrible loss is reliably followed by another game — because they are, in the end, games.

That reliable continuity in the face of constant failure can be very reassuring for a normal, non-famous-athlete person. Life, to paraphrase a very unwise man, is literally all we have. And though the stakes of the average person’s everyday activities, taken in the context of the world at large, aren’t very high, they are, in another sense, everything. My small, sad everyday failures are just as small and sad and arbitrary as a ball falling from a glove onto a grass field — but because my life is composed entirely of the everyday and the insignificant, even these failures can seem insurmountable. Yet every day, I watch people who have much more to lose than I do somehow rebound from their inevitable failures to play again, and again, and again. Often, I wonder how they do it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies made a minor outfield upgrade on Monday, acquiring outfielder Kevin Pillar from the Boston Red Sox for a player to be named later and international slot money.

The Rockies are acquiring Kevin Pillar and cash from the Red Sox in exchange for a PTBNL and 2019-20 international slot money, per source.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) August 31, 2020

Now, you may be thinking, “Rockies plus Szymborski means the latter is mad about something!” While you’d frequently be accurate, it’s not so in this case. Short of someone mind-blowing like Brendan Rodgers being the player to be named later — Brendan Rodgers will not be the player to be named later — this is a perfectly reasonable upgrade to the roster that is unlikely to cost the team much. Outfield defense has always been one of those awkward problems for a team in Colorado, thanks to the phenomenon, unusual in most locales, of having a massive home run park that also has a gargantuan outfield. Glove-only players tend to not get the same offensive advantages in Coors and the amount of outfield real estate makes it dangerous to have a marginally defensive center fielder man the position, as the team discovered with Charlie Blackmon.

Kevin Pillar had a solid little run with the Blue Jays as a glove wizard who could hit the occasional homer. He’s in his 30s now and there has been some decline, especially defensively, but if push comes to shove, I think he’d be a better defender in center than most of the Rockies’ options. David Dahl, the normal center fielder in 2020, has been out with back issues and I feel that Pillar’s still likely to be better defensively than either Garrett Hampson or Sam Hilliard. With Dahl’s injury history and the Rockies still hovering around .500, a coin-flip to make the playoffs, I think this kind of move — one that doesn’t hamstring future moves — is a good transaction to make.

Pillar hits the ball hard enough that there’s probably some decent offensive upside in Coors as well. He’s hit .274/.325/.470 in 2020 and thanks to Alex Verdugo playing left after Andrew Benintendi’s injury, he’s spent a lot of time in the thankless, awkward task of playing Mookie Betts‘ position in right. Pillar is a free agent after the 2020 season and the Red Sox are at the bottom of the American League, so there was no real reason for the team not to make a trade rather than let him walk for nothing after the season.

The Colorado Rockies have a lot of work to do to right an organization that’s largely pointed in the wrong direction. But picking up Kevin Pillar doesn’t make it any more difficult for the team to (theoretically) do these things in the offseason and gives them a marginally increased chance of making the playoffs this year. A good pickup, so I’ll holster my snark for the moment.