The Colorado Rockies bullpen has seen better days. Dominant at the start of the season, we’ve long passed the point where it could call itself that. In order to help rectify this problem, the team acquired reliever Pat Neshek from the Philadelphia Phillies tonight:

The #Rockies have acquired RHP Pat Neshek from the Philadelphia Phillies. pic.twitter.com/xf3bWwdz8Y

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) July 27, 2017

In a subsequent tweet, the full scope of the deal came together. It is as follows:

Let’s go back to the Rockies bullpen for a second, so we can see the impetus for this trade (July numbers are as of Wednesday morning):

Fright. Night. Comparisons to the Titanic’s maiden voyage and the Rockies bullpen are welcome. Except with the acquisition of Neshek, the Rockies are aiming to steer around those icebergs. Neshek has been a top-10 reliever this season, and automatically becomes one of the Rockies two-best relievers, if not their best reliever.

Always a pretty efficient pitcher in terms of walks and strikeouts, Neshek has really maxed out this season, particularly with his strikeout rate, which is at a career-best 30.4%. He is simultaneously getting batters to swing at more pitches than ever and making them miss more than ever, which is a particularly nasty combination.

Neshek is a fly-ball pitcher, which generally you would think of as a bad thing at Coors Field, but Jeff Zimmerman introduced research last week that shows that fly-ball pitchers have been able to handle the home run surge better than ground-ball pitchers. And indeed Neshek has been. His HR/FB is at the second-lowest mark for his career.

Neshek works in a sinker-slider fashion almost exclusively — Pitch Info has his pitch mix as 49.3% sinkers, 47.8% sliders and 2.7% change-ups. If those first two percentages seem high, it’s because they are. His sinker percentage ranks 20th among qualified relievers, and his slider percentage ranks 10th. The only other two qualified relievers who are throwing both their sinker and slider both 40 percent of the time are Peter Moylan and Luke Gregerson.

Looking at that slider usage leaderboard, we find that the two relievers just ahead of Neshek are also Rockies’ pitchers — Adam Ottavino and Greg Holland. Heading into today, Rockies relievers were tied for fourth in the majors and first in the National League in slider usage with … the Phillies. With Neshek heading west to Colorado, the Rockies’ slider usage is only going to increase. If there’s a fly in this ointment, it’s that the Dodgers and Nationals have been crushing sliders this season, but should the Rockies make it that far, it will be fascinating to watch that strength vs. strength matchup.

With this trade, the Rockies should be able to achieve the simultaneous goals of dumping Jordan Lyles at the nearest dumpster fire (they’d want him to feel right at home, after all) and relying a lot less on Ottavino. Ottavino has been striking out hitters at a level better than his career average, but his control and home runs allowed have taken a significant turn for the worse, and it will help Colorado a bunch that they will be able to throttle back his high-leverage usage. At least until he figures out how to get his control back under, uh, control.

Moreover, this is a clear signal from the Rockies front office that the team is interested in competing for the NL pennant right now. As former Purple Row writer Andrew Fisher pointed out on Twitter after the trade was announced, this may very well be the first time the Rockies have acquired an All-Star at the trade deadline in the same season in which said player was an All-Star. While relievers are not usually the most exciting All-Stars, this is still a pretty big deal for Colorado.

Since Neshek is a free agent at the end of the season, it didn’t cost them a ton either. All three players acquired by Philly have interesting things about them, but none of them make you sit up in your chair and say wow. The one who got any prospect heat this spring was Jose Gomez. Here’s what Eric Longenhagen had to say about him last November:

Jose Gomez, SS, 2.8 KATOH+ – A stocky 5-foot-11, Gomez is an average runner with an average arm and could be a 45 or 50 at shortstop at maturity. He has mature bat-to-ball skills and hit well for his age in the Pioneer League this year but lacks power projection because the body is already pretty maxed out. He’s got a long-term utility profile.

Gomez posted a 132 wRC+ in rookie ball last year, and has replicated that this year in Low-A Asheville with a 136 wRC+. This is notable in the sense that Asheville’s ballpark is generally better for left-handed hitters, and Gomez is a right-handed hitter. He has notched 18 steals, but he’s also been caught 11 times, so we’ll charitably classify his baserunning as “raw.” Still, a .324/.374/.437 is a line you’d love to see from a middle infielder. While Gomez has played mainly shortstop this year, he has also started 10+ games at second- and third base, so his prep for that future utility role is already well underway.

The internet, as it is wont to do, briefly became obsessed with J.D. Hammer’s looks this evening. His 38.9% strikeout rate also may be worthy of future obsession, but since he’s compiled it at Low-A and High-A, we’ll hold off on salivating for another few months. Also tamping down expectations is his high walk rate since being promoted to High-A. It is a little disappointing to see him traded away though, as he is a Colorado native, and it would have been a great story had he ascended to the majors in a Rockies uniform.

After three seasons in rookie ball, Alejandro Requena is pitching well for Asheville this season. His 2.85 ERA is tops among Tourists starters, and it ranks 10th among South Atlantic League pitchers with at least 70 innings pitched this season.

The Rockies bullpen started the season flying high, but has since come crashing back to earth. By acquiring Pat Neshek, they have put themselves on much firmer ground as the pennant race starts to heat up. He won’t win them the World Series all by himself. But his acquisition — which cost them three interesting but likely low-ceiling players — signals that Colorado has designs on getting there, and that they will try to get there on the wings of so many sliders.

Denver, we have a problem.

Actually, it’s Denver’s baseball team that has a problem — and maybe problems, plural. The club has weaknesses at right field, catcher — MLB.com’s Thomas Harding reports that the Rockies have expressed interest in Jonathan Lucroy despite his framing decline — and maybe even first base. If the team wishes to maintain and perhaps enhance their postseason chances, they ought to consider addressing their problem areas.

While we always think about the Rockies as having run-prevention issues, it’s important to understand their performance in the context of their mile-high home environment. The club’s starters actually rank seventh in the NL in WAR and ninth in ERA- (93). Colorado also ranks fourth in relief WAR. So even though the Rockies’ pitching has slumped over the last month, they’ve still enjoyed an influx of talent to the rotation and have had success (well, at least before recent weeks) with a new philosophy that includes throwing breaking balls lower in the zone than every other team in baseball.

Are the Rockies looking for pitching? Perhaps, but only because every team is looking for pitching. Their roster has greater need elsewhere, though.

For example, the club ranks 25th in first-base production (0.6 WAR), where Ian Desmond was signed as a curious fit — and has been replacement level at first and left field this season. Mark Reynolds and his game of extremes have earned the recent lion’s share of playing time. He’s projected for a precisely league-average line (100 wRC+) over the course of the season. That doesn’t require immediate attention, perhaps, but isn’t ideal for first base.

Catcher is another position where the Rockies rank poorly, and where Tony Wolters‘ framing value has declined this season, but that is likely a tougher position to fill. Wolters was expected to be an asset behind the plate and end the Rockies’ long history of poor receiving, though Lucroy wouldn’t seem to help in that area.

But the most glaring production void among all contenders, to date, comes care of the Rockies’ right-field situation, where Carlos Gonzalez and company have produced a disastrous collective line.

If you weren’t concerned about CarGo already, you should be.

Whether the issue is an injury or a mysterious Andrew McCutchen-like extended slump or perhaps a premature and dramatic decline, CarGo’s power has vanished and his increased out-of-zone swing rate suggests a player who is searching and isn’t close to an answer.

Consider what we can find from new heat-map capabilities at FanGraphs.

Gonzalez’s slugging per swing this season:

Gonzalez’s slugging per swing last season:

One chart looks like one storm cell on a weather radar reading (this season), compared to a storm front in 2016.

We’re getting close to August, which means we are approaching Monday’s trade deadline. Gonzalez has a 50 wRC+. He’s had injury-plagued seasons before this — like in 2014 when he recorded a sub-100 wRC+ — but he’s never experiened a slump like this one.

It’s been the kind of season where CarGo’s best swing has resulted in a foul ball.

It’s probably not surprising, given their trouble in right field, that the Rockies were reportedly interested in J.D. Martinez.

That interest is perhaps indicative of the club’s level of concern with Gonzalez’s performance. And as Morosi notes, Martinez would have helped against the high volume of left-handed pitchers in the division. (And in hindsight, keeping Martinez away from the division- and Wild Card-rival Diamondbacks would have been helpful, particularly given the low cost.)

The Rockies could call upon Raimel Tapia again, who didn’t show much power but slashed .314/.369/.480 in limited plate appearances — and who, unlike Gonzalez, has produced above replacement-level value. Another internal option is David Dahl, who was activated off the 60-day DL last week and has just 60 minor league plate appearances this season.

There are still a number of possible trade short-term targets. Jose Bautista, Jay Bruce, Matt Joyce, Daniel Nava, and Steve Pearce are among the outfield options detailed at MLB Trade Rumors.

At 58-44, the Rockies have a firm grasp of the No. 2 Wild Card spot at the moment, and their +52 run differential suggests they are a quality group that isn’t outperforming their true talent level. But FanGraphs projections have the Rockies going 29-32 with a -17 run differential the rest of the way. FanGraphs playoff odds give the Rockies a 69.8% of reaching the postseason, and, interestingly, a 31.8% chance of reaching the division round of the playoffs. This is a Rockies team to bet upon.

To protect their position, hedge against continued dearth of production in right field, to strengthen a possible postseason roster, it could help to upgrade right and perhaps first base, with, say, fly-ball machine Yonder Alonso.

The Rockies are in a rare position. The market for position players seems to favor buyers by a lot. Their greatest needs are arguably position players. They can upgrade and hedge against continued disappointment. And given the fickle nature of pitching, particularly young pitchers on the steppe just east of the Rocky Mountains, the Rockies could do worse than try and upgrade the soft spots in the lineup. Martinez would have been an excellent fit at a low cost, but the good news for the club is there are other affordable options available.

Time is ticking toward non-waiver deadline, but there is still time for the Rockies to build upon their best team of the last decade.

Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Wes Rogers, OF, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: HM   Top 100: NR
Line: 2-for-4, HR, BB

Notes
Rogers’ draft stock spiked during the 2014 JUCO World Series, during which he hit .538. He went straight from Grand Junction — where the JUCO World Series is held and where the Rockies’ Pioneer League affiliate plays their home games — to Scottsdale to workout with Colorado. He ran a plus-plus 60-yard dash there and the Rockies drafted him in the fourth round. He’s having a bit of a breakout year, albeit as an old-for-level prospect repeating the Cal League. But Rogers runs very well, has above-average bat speed, and exhibits terrific command of the strike zone. He’s also been an efficient and prolific base-stealer, lifting 159 career bases in 324 games at an 88% success rate. He’s also a long-limbed, small-school prospect, both late-blooming traits. Some of his power is probably fueled by Lancaster’s hitting environment, but there are big-leagues tools here, too.

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Adam Ottavino had three wild pitches this year before Sunday’s game.

That’s one of those opening sentences that doesn’t bode well for what happened next. You can’t reduce your wild-pitch total, and it’s generally not newsworthy when someone throws just one wild pitch, regardless of how devastating the ramifications of that errant throw are. For this sort of thing to be newsworthy, Ottavino would have had to commit a particularly nasty act of self-immolation.

Well, he did. Ottavino threw four wild pitches, and runs scored on all four of them. The Rockies scored six runs. Because of the wild pitches, though, they lost. It’s not what you want if you’re a Rockies fan.

A Tommy John survivor, Ottavino’s had a much rougher time putting the ball where he wants it to go this season. He carried a 14% walk rate into Sunday, the ninth-worst mark among qualified relievers. Then he walked three of the nine batters he faced. A walk rate that high is never all that great, but it helps that Ottavino can also strike guys out. He boasts a mid-90s fastball and a slider so notorious that it has its own Twitter account. When it’s on, it’s disgusting, and that’s the state it’s usually in. When it’s not, things can get hairy. The slider wasn’t the issue yesterday. His fastball is what got him in trouble.

Tony Wolters wants the fastball away from Yasmani Grandal’s bat with the bases loaded. The fastball didn’t go away. It went in, and bored a hole to the backstop. Ottavino’s release point is all out of whack, so he’s throwing across his body far more than usual. By the time he releases the ball, it’s got nowhere left to go. Justin Turner jogs home, and it’s a one-run game.

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So far, the Diamondbacks have been a major surprise, and although every surprise is, by definition, surprising, there are degrees. What makes the Diamondbacks all the more surprising is that they are where they are without Shelby Miller. A Miller bounceback was supposed to be key to their hopes, but then he got hurt, which should’ve been trouble. Enter Zack Godley. Godley has plugged the hole, and then some.

Relative to last season, Godley’s been one of the more improved starting pitchers in the major leagues. While he has several elements going on at any one time, his main trick is a dynamite curveball that he’s fallen in love with. By run values, it’s been baseball’s second-best curveball, behind Corey Kluber and above Lance McCullers. Godley’s curve is something special, and it causes one’s discipline to deteriorate. It’s not an easy pitch to lay off.

Godley, on Thursday, got a start in Colorado. He faced Charlie Blackmon to lead off the bottom of the first, and Godley got Blackmon to a two-strike count. A couple curves couldn’t finish him off. Nor could a couple non-curves. Godley’s seventh pitch came in a 2-and-2 count, and at last he threw the pitch that he wanted. The curve caught the plate, but it plummeted below the zone. It was labeled for the dirt, but too sharp to spit on. It was the swing-and-miss curve to make Blackmon go away.

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Earlier this week, Travis Sawchik took note of some steps that Colorado Rockies pitchers have taken this year to better succeed in the context of the team’s challenging home park. Jeff Sullivan added to the conversation the next day, observing that the Rockies have been fantastic on the road this season. To continue the investigation of Colorado’s strong campaign, I’ve attempted here to understand what factors have contributed to the Rockies’ road record — which stands at 25-13 entering today, the second-best mark in the majors. My conclusion? A good bullpen, the club’s first decent defense in quite some time, and some luck.

The Rockies have one of the best records in the majors this year. Examining merely the raw numbers, one might conclude that the club’s offense, which ranks fourth in runs per game, is largely to thank for that. That would be a bad conclusion to reach, however. For the Rockies, in their stadium, fourth is actually quite bad. After adjusting for park, the team’s offensive is 15% worse than league average, fifth worst in the majors. One might argue that the park adjustment penalizes hitters too much for Coors Field. Perhaps that’s the case. Even so, the Rockies have recorded a below-average offensive mark away from Coors, as well. Their offense, by most measures, just hasn’t been that great.

There are also suggestions that the club is perhaps getting a bit lucky. While the Rockies have compiled a 47-27 record overall, Pythagorean win percentage (which estimates a club’s record based on runs scored and allowed) has them at 43-31, while BaseRuns (which strips out sequencing) has them at 40-34. That could go a long way in explaining the Rockies road record: just chalk it up to luck and be done.

We can’t actually do that, though, because most of that luck has come at home for the Rockies. In 36 home games, Colorado has outscored their opponents by just 19 runs; on the road, that margin is 46 runs. At least in terms of runs scored and prevented, the Rockies have earned their road success.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Pedro Gonzalez, CF, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Short Season  Age: 19   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 4-for-5, 2B, BB, SB, CS
Notes
Gonzalez spent much of extended spring training in the Dominican Republic. Colorado doesn’t have an AZL team, so Gonzalez went directly from the DR to Grand Junction, his second year at that affiliate. Because of this, it has been hard for clubs, even those who place a heavier priority on complex-level scouting, to get eyes on Gonzalez. He remains physically projectable at a lean, broad-shoulder 6-foot-5, 190, and he’s a plus runner under way.

His defensive instincts draw mixed reviews, but he has the speed to stay there and try to polish his routes over time. If he fills out, slows down, and has to move to a corner it probably means he’s grown into enough power to profile there, at which point it will become imperative that he quell his desire to chase breaking balls off the plate.

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The Rockies presently sit atop the NL West, and they own the best record in the National League. Before the season started, the FanGraphs community identified the Rockies as the team the projections were most underrating, but then, on the other hand, the Rockies also fell victim to a number of early-season health problems. It’s been an outstanding two and a half months, in other words, and the Rockies’ playoff odds have soared to nearly 90%.

Plenty has already gone right, and these being the Rockies, they’ll forever be a source of certain intrigue. There’s no separating the Rockies from the reality that they play in baseball’s weirdest environment, and Travis just wrote on Monday about the Rockies learning to pitch with confidence at Coors Field. The adaptability of the pitching staff has been a major story early on, with so many young successes. But I’d like to quickly highlight something else. It’s something very simple! Here are the Rockies’ year-to-year franchise winning percentages at home:

The present Rockies are at .618, which would stand as their best mark since 2010. Now here’s the same plot, but for road games instead:

The present Rockies are at .658, which would very easily be their highest mark ever. Only once before have the Rockies won even half of their road games — 2009, when they went 41-40. They’re already 25-13. The Rockies have yet to play half of their games, and the samples get even smaller when you split them in two, so I don’t want to jump the gun or anything. But, quietly, a huge development here has been the Rockies playing well outside of Colorado. That’s been a problem of theirs forever.

Over the previous decade, the Rockies won 54% of their home games, ranking them 15th in baseball. Nice and average. Over the same span of time, the Rockies won a hair under 40% of their road games, ranking them 29th in baseball. No other team had a bigger such difference in rank, and no other team had a bigger such difference in winning percentage. The Rockies deal with twin phenomena, which are almost impossible to separate: they get a home-field advantage, and they also get a road-field disadvantage. Theories have abounded. I probably don’t need to go over them all.

Simply, the Rockies have been able to win at home. They’ve needed to do something about the other half of their games. There’s evidence, now, that something has organizationally clicked. It’s also too early to declare that — the Rockies have faced a softer road schedule. Their home opponents have an average winning percentage of .511, while their road opponents have an average winning percentage of .462. That’s a thing. That’s a partial explanation. But it’s not a *complete* explanation. The Rockies are showing a reduced home/road split, and it’s happening by the road numbers getting better, instead of the home numbers getting worse.

I don’t know when we’ll be able to say anything for sure. Park factors always take a while to stabilize, and the Rockies’ schedule will even out. It’s not like the Rockies are suddenly better when they aren’t at Coors Field. That wouldn’t make any sense. But right now, they’re running a hell of a reverse split. They’re literally the last team you’d expect to be doing that. If we’re going to talk about why the Rockies are where they are, this has to be a part of the conversation. It’s something out of the Rockies’ wildest dreams.

Some say it’s all been done before. That’s perhaps mostly true, but as something only mostly true, all of it has not actually been done before. This is especially true if you are willing to include qualifiers. Take this example: Before last weekend, no player had ever completed a cycle with a walk-off homer when the team was trailing at the time of the blast, per Baseball-Reference’s Play Index. Nolan Arenado has now eliminated that previous distinction.

Cycles are fairly rare, occurring 255 times, per Baseball-Reference, roughly once every 700 games, and this decade has been in line with that average. Since the beginning of last season, there have been 99 walkoff wins that ended in a homer, about one in 35 games. Of those 99 walkoffs, just 19 were come from behind homers, and only 13 came in the ninth, roughly one in 266 games. Put those two together, and we have about a one in 750,000 chance of both happening in a game. Given we’ve had about one quarter of that many games played over the last 100 years, it seems reasonable we’ve waited this long.

There have been a few other similar games over the years if you relax some of the requirements. There were only nine games in the Baseball-Reference Play Index where a player hit for the cycle and had the game winning hit in a walkoff. Many might have seen that the last player to hit a walkoff homer to complete a cycle was Carlos Gonzalez in 2010. He hit his shot to break a 5-5 tie against the Cubs. Hopefully the seven year difference between occurrences adds to the perceived rarity as opposed to making it seem commonplace. Read the rest of this entry »

Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Breiling Eusebio, LHP, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Short Season  Age: 20   Org Rank: NR   Top 100: NR
Line: 5 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 1 R, 7 K

Notes
It’s been a strong 2017 affiliate debut for Eusebio, who looked quite good throughout extended spring training, his fastball often sitting 90-94 with some tail. His low-70s curveball improved as we inched closer to the summer and it, too, was missing bats as June arrived and is currently average, flashing above. Eusebio has trouble timing his delivery, which can negatively impact his command, but he’s deceptive, throws hard for a lefty starting-pitching prospect, and has breaking-ball feel. Very much a prospect.

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