The Rockies advanced to the postseason last year (albeit only for a brief stay) for the fourth time in club history, and they did it in a manner uncommon for them: through pitching.

The Rockies ranked eighth in pitching WAR (18.6) in the majors last season and seventh in ERA- (90). The mark tied the 2007 club, which advanced to the World Series, for the best ERA- in their history, and it was just the eighth time the club has been better than average off the mound when adjusting for park and league run-scoring environments.

The Rockies, 23-20 entering play Wednesday, are following a similar path this year, ranking seventh in pitching WAR (4.8) and fourth in the NL. They have a 96 ERA-.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All the numbered prospects here also appear on THE BOARD, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. Click here to visit THE BOARD.

60 FV Prospects

After demolishing the Cal League last year (as was expected), Rodgers had a solid 38-game run at Double-A. He turned 21 in August. He’s hit everywhere he’s been since high school and continues to look fine, if unspectacular, at shortstop. He’s above average in every way at the plate (the bat control, power, feel for opposite-field contact, ability to punish mistakes), which means he’s got a good chance to be an All-Star if he stays at shortstop, and it looks like he’s going to.

50 FV Prospects

Pint was identified as a potential high-first-round pick as a high school underclassman, showing mid-90s velocity and a long, lanky, athletic frame in tournaments. He remained an elite arm over the next few years, going fourth overall in 2016 and continuing to show some of the best stuff on the planet, including two 70s and two 60s on some days.

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If one were to assemble a list of the major-league pitchers whose strengths are most well suited to surviving in Colorado, Kyle Freeland would appear among that collection of names — in particular, because he possesses both a good sinker and strong command. The sinker is important for inducing ground balls, which cause much less damage than balls in the air at Coors, due both to the altitude at which the park rests and the spacious outfield it contains. Command is important not only because mistake pitches are punished more swiftly at Coors, but also because walks tend to amplify the consequences of those mistakes.

Kyle Freeland had a modestly successful rookie season a year ago, getting a lot of ground balls and putting together a 4.57 FIP, perfectly average when factoring in his ballpark. He struggled a little to start the season, but over his last four starts, he’s defied the Coors Field stereotype by abandoning his sinking fastball and pitching up in the zone. So far, it is working.

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Position: Data Engineer

Description:

The Rockies are looking for a Data Engineer to join their Research and Development team. The successful candidate will be responsible for expanding and optimizing their data warehouse and data pipeline architecture, with a focus on collecting, cleaning, transforming, managing and validating data using distributed computing and storage systems. The goal of the Data Engineer is to democratize data, support data initiatives, ensure consistent data delivery and empower Rockies personnel to derive powerful and actionable insights.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Create, maintain and optimize data ETL/ELT pipelines
• Documentation of data/pipelines
• Ensure the ingestion of data and errors are handled without interruption
• Process and securely store extremely sensitive data for callback and future use
• Prepare distributed, disjoint, multi-formatted data sets for data scientists
• Research and investigate new and interesting datasets to include in our data warehouse
• Perform quantitative research related to baseball strategy and player evaluation
• Collaborate with coaches, scouts and baseball operations to suggest process improvements

Requirements:

Education and Work Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering
  • Candidates still in school (junior or senior level) with extensive work towards such degree will be considered
• SQL knowledge and experience working with a variety of relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server
• Experience with a variety of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data formats including delimited files, XML, JSON and natural language text
• Ability to effectively use multiple programming languages including one of the major data science languages of Python, R or Scala
• Experience or working knowledge of “Big Data” tools such as Hadoop, Hive, Spark or Presto is a plus
• Experience with AWS Cloud services such as EC2, RDS, and S3 is a plus
• Experience with data workflow tools such as Luigi, or Airflow is a plus
• Knowledge and understanding of baseball and baseball statistics

Functional Skills

• Ability to work evenings and weekends required
• Passion for the intersection of baseball and data
• Passion for quality data
• Strong organizational skills and ability to self-start
• Strong intellectual curiosity
• Desire to learn and contribute
• Ability to work in a collaborative and open team environment
• Ability to develop and maintain successful working relationship with members of the Front Office

To Apply:
Qualified candidates should send their letter of interest and resume to BaseballJobs@rockies.com no later than June 3, 2018.

Tanking is a problem. Professional sports like baseball are built on the assumption that both sides are trying to win. Organizations putting forth less than their best efforts hurts the integrity of the sport and provides fans with little reason to engage. That said, the perception of tanking might have overtaken the reality of late. Competitive imbalance is not the same as tanking. Sometimes teams are just bad, even if they are trying not to be.

Tanking concerns are not new. Two years ago, just after the Astros and Cubs had turned their teams around, the Phillies were attempting to dismantle their roster by trading Cole Hamels. The Braves had traded multiple players away from a team that had been competitive. The Brewers, who traded away Carlos Gomez, would soon do the same with Jonathan Lucroy after he rebuilt his trade value.

The Braves, Brewers, and Phillies all sold off whatever assets they could. Two years later, though, those clubs aren’t mired in last place. Rather, they’re a combined 54-37 and projected to win around 80 games each this season in what figures to be a competitive year for each. While the Braves and Phillies could and/or should have done more this offseason to improve their rosters, neither resorted to an extreme level of failure, and the teams are better today than they would have been had they not rebuilt. While accusations of tanking dogged each, none of those clubs descended as far as either the Astros or Cubs. None came close to the NBA-style tank jobs many feared.

One might suspect that I’ve cherry-picked the three clubs mentioned above, purposely selecting teams with surprising early-season success to prop up a point about the relatively innocuous effects of tanking. That’s not what I’ve done, though. Rather, I’ve highlighted the three teams Buster Olney cited by name two years ago — and which Dave Cameron also addressed — in a piece on tanking.

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Between West 124th and 125th Streets on St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem rests a street-level commercial space situated between a Dollar Tree and a Chuck E. Cheese’s, and it is where Adam Ottavino might have saved his career last winter.

The space was a solution to a problem. He lived in the city in the offseason with his wife and two-year-old daughter. In previous offseasons, he had traveled out to Long Island to work and throw at a facility, but the commute and practice time away was beginning to strain his family.

Moreover, Ottavino’s previous throwing partner, Steven Matz, had left the city and moved Nashville, Tenn., after becoming engaged. Finding a throwing partner and facility in Manhattan, the most prized real estate in the country, wasn’t easy. He knew Matt Harvey was one of a few major-league pitchers living in the city in the offseason, so he asked Harvey if he was interested in finding a place to throw, but Harvey declined.

“At that point, I was kind of screwed,” Ottavino said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Ottavino, a Brooklyn native, required a productive offseason. He was left off the Rockies’ Wild Card roster weeks earlier after an awful 2017 season when he walked nearly seven batters per nine innings, leading to a 16% walk rate. He was in the final year of his contract. He had spent some time at Driveline Baseball after the season ended. He thought he had now had some solutions. He had bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with which to try and make himself a better pitcher. But he needed a place to experiment.

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PITTSBURGH — As defensive shifts — or, at least, infields shifts — have become an everyday part of the game, it takes a lot to get our attention. The Diamondbacks’ shift against Rockies second baseman DJ LeMahieu last season got our attention.

In case you’ve forgotten, borrowing from a post from last season detailing the alignment:

That gets our attention.

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A favorite question of the baseball audience is, when does a small sample start to have meaning? There are a few general rules of thumb, but in large part it’s still a question, I think, because there is no perfect answer. It can be a gut thing, or it can be a matter of magnitude. I don’t care if a batter starts out 6-for-10 with three home runs. I’d care a lot more if a batter were to start out 8-for-10 with six home runs. Some performances over small samples are so very good — or so very bad — that there almost has to be signal. Even over a short amount of time, it’s hard for a player to fluke his way into the extremes.

Over the winter, the Rockies invested heavily in their bullpen. You could argue they invested *too* heavily, but, well, this is the bullpen era, and you’d figure the Rockies, of all teams, might need to keep theirs both deep and refreshed. It’s a bullpen with plenty of interesting arms, but the most important reliever might be Adam Ottavino. In the past, Ottavino has been genuinely dominant. Last season, he came off the rails, with a walk rate of 16%. With a bad Ottavino, the Colorado bullpen might not be a strength. With a good Ottavino, it would go four or five deep.

It’s early. But, as early as it is, Ottavino has faced 34 batters, and he’s struck out 22 of them. He’s walked one guy, he’s allowed one run, and he’s given up two hits. Nearly half of all swing attempts against Ottavino have missed. Nearly half of all swing attempts against Ottavino pitches in the strike zone have missed. Only Josh Hader might rival what Ottavino has done. This is a small sample that’s so good, it’s crying out to be investigated.

The results are almost unbelievable. It turns out Ottavino also has an exceptional process.

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I don’t know if Charlie Blackmon is baseball’s most underrated player. Probably not. There are a lot of very good players. But just in case you don’t know exactly what’s up: Last season, Blackmon finished ninth among position players in WAR. Over the past three seasons, Blackmon has ranked 22nd, between George Springer and Kyle Seager. Blackmon is a center fielder who just finished with a top-30 expected wOBA. The year before that, he was in the top 40. Charlie Blackmon is very good, and, depending on your own personal thresholds, you might well say that Charlie Blackmon is great. He’s been lined up to be a part of the upcoming massive free-agent market.

But Blackmon has decided to take himself off the market entirely. Or, the team and the agency have decided, with Blackmon’s final approval. You don’t often see premium free agents sign extensions so close to the end of a contract, but Blackmon has agreed to an extra five years with the Rockies, with a $94-million guarantee. It’s more complicated than that, but the take-home point is that Blackmon is going to stick around in Colorado. Clearly, he’s fond of it there, and he’d hardly be the first player to decide that free agency appears less appealing than it used to.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a slider in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the second installment of this series — Part 1 can be found here — we’ll hear from three pitchers — Kyle Freeland, Jim Johnson, and Kris Medlen — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Kyle Freeland (Rockies) on His Changeup

“I never really threw a changeup in college. When I got into pro ball, that was our main focus to help me develop throughout the minors and get to this point. We had to find a grip that I was comfortable enough with to throw it in any count.

“It took some time. I probably went through half a dozen different grips before I finally found one that fits me, that works with my arm slot and my arm speed. It wasn’t until the end of last season that I finally found what I think works best. I had one that was working well for awhile, but it kind of tapered off. I wasn’t really comfortable throwing it off my ring finger and my pinky finger. Read the rest of this entry »