Ever since the Rockies signed Gerardo Parra, the Rockies trade of an outfielder has felt fait acompli, and given that they’re not really contenders this year, dealing Carlos Gonzalez has appeared to be the pretty obvious move. Given his strong second half and the fact that he’s only under team control for two more seasons — at a not-exactly-bargain-price of $38 million — while fellow outfielders Charlie Blackmon and Corey Dickerson are under control for three and four more years respectively, it seems pretty logical for CarGo to be one on the move, though the Rockies have been entertaining offers on all three. Which is perfectly rational; you might as well weigh your options before deciding on a course of action.

But this morning, Ken Rosenthal reported that Corey Dickerson is the most likely outfielder to be on the move, and Rays beat writer Mark Topkin followed up with a somewhat confirming note of his own, including the player most likely to be leaving Tampa Bay if the two teams do strike a deal.

Some in game sense Dickerson will be OFer #Rockies trade. Will require less of return than Blackmon. #Rays involved, as @TBTimes_Rays said.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 26, 2016

If #Rays make the deal, would think it could be for Jake McGee. Also would require further shuffling by #Rays https://t.co/d7FURlHN4s

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) January 26, 2016

While acknowledging that this may just be the framework of a larger deal, or perhaps the first step of a series of moves, I’m hard pressed to think of a trade that makes less sense to me than Corey Dickerson for Jake McGee.

You know what the non-contending Rockies need more of? Good solid players they can build around for the future, like, say, Corey Dickerson. You know what the Rockies don’t really need at this point? A injury-prone closer with only two years of team control remaining, and one whose salary will skyrocket in arbitration if he stays healthy and racks up a bunch of saves. Yes, the Rockies bullpen stinks, but when you’re not really in contention, you can afford to give chances to young unproven guys; the ability to create assets by giving players opportunities is one of the huge advantages of not focusing on short-term results. And it’s not bringing McGee in to pitch at Coors Field is a great way to raise his trade value, so even if the team is looking to get him to flip him this summer, that seems like a dubious strategy.

From the Rays side, turning two years of McGee into four years of Dickerson would be a pretty smart move, except it’s not entirely clear what they’d do with Dickerson. They have Desmond Jennings and Steven Souza in their corner outfield spots, and it seems unlikely they’d want to displace either of those two at this point in their careers. They could move Dickerson to first base — something the Rockies could just do as well — except that they’ve got kind of a logjam there, between James Loney and Logan Morrison from the left side and Steve Pearce and Brandon Guyer from the right side.

Loney and Morrison are not any good, so swapping in Dickerson for either would be an upgrade, but that was kind of the point of signing Pearce last week; it doesn’t seem likely that they want to relegate him to the weak side of a platoon right after signing him. And they just traded for Morrison a few months ago, so presumably, they’re not quite ready to give up on him just yet.

From a pure asset standpoint, turning two years of an injury prone closer into four years of a solid average corner outfielder would be worth doing, but the Rays don’t really need an average corner outfielder, so as Topkin noted, it would be a move that forced some other pieces to fall into place. But even with that, it wouldn’t really explain why the Rockies would want to trade Dickerson for a reliever. After all, the combination of Parra and McGee will make $13 million next year and probably closer to $16-$17 million in 2017; if they really wanted to just upgrade their bullpen, they could have thrown that money at a reliever in the free agent class and just kept Dickerson, retaining the younger outfielder rather than signing an older hitter and trading for a pitcher.

I’m sure getting pitchers to actually agree to sign in Colorado is difficult — and no reliever on the market this winter is as dominant as a healthy Jake McGee — but I still find it hard to see how signing Parra to trade Dickerson for a short-term relief upgrade helps the Rockies do anything that they should want to be doing. If you’re optimistic about both Parra and McGee, maybe this pushes them from 74 to 76 wins or something, but it’s also quite possible that Parra is worse than Dickerson, offsetting most of the gain of adding McGee to the bullpen. And that’s without accounting for the fact that a Parra/McGee combination would be more expensive and have less long-term value than a Dickerson/FA reliever duo.

Most likely, if and when the deal is announced, there will be more pieces to the deal — or a follow-up trade — that will help explain the motivation that is driving these teams in this direction. The Rays side is at least fairly easy to imagine, especially if someone else is willing to overpay for Jennings or something. On the Rockies side, I would hope that there’s something else of note coming back besides McGee, or that they’re acquiring him with the intention of trading him elsewhere in the near future. If the Rockies really are trading a decent young hitter for a short-term bullpen upgrade in a year where they don’t really have much of a chance to contend, then it will be tough to see how the Rockies new front office is demonstrably different than the old one.

The Rockies officially signed Gerardo Parra the other day. It was an odd move, because it seemingly killed the team’s leverage to deal one of their existing outfielders, which is something that has been rumored to be in the offing all offseason. While that might be true, it doesn’t have to be true, because there is an easy solution to the logjam — playing Corey Dickerson at first base.

The Rockies have been searching for a first baseman for a couple of years. Over the past three seasons, the team has produced just 1.4 WAR at the position — 22nd in the majors overall. When Todd Helton retired, they went the veteran route and signed Justin Morneau. He helped improve the team’s performance at first base to 15th overall over the past two seasons, which is better but not spectacular. Morneau hit well when he played — a .316 average and 3.0 WAR aren’t too shabby — but he only logged 52% of the team’s plate appearances at first base the last two years. And now he’s gone.

In his wake, there are currently two main candidates for first base playing time, Ben Paulsen and Mark Reynolds. The Rockies quietly signed Reynolds to a $2.6 million contract last month. Reynolds has been around forever, but is just entering his age-32 season. If you’re wondering why a 32-year-old first baseman nets less than $3 million, well the answer is because he isn’t very good. Reynolds has been worth 0.3 WAR or less in four of the last five seasons, and in two of those five seasons — including last season — his value dipped below replacement level. He loses value in both defense and base running, which would be fine if he were a true masher. He isn’t. In fact, his wRC+ has topped 100 in any of the last three seasons, nor has his slugging percentage topped .400 in them.

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It’s tough to admit that time has begun to pass you by. This is how we end up with middle-aged woman wearing Phat Farm sneakers at the mall or that 60-year-old dude who only shoots threes and never gets back on defense playing basketball at the rec with the college kids every day. And, hey, I’m not here to judge those folks. Matter of fact, I respect the hell out of them. The old dude can really splash and the mom just values her children’s opinion and wants their adoration. I’m sure she’s a wonderful parent, albeit one with a very questionable fashion sense. At the end of the day, it comes down to whatever makes you happy, and if wearing Phat Farm sneakers or being the local wellness center’s version of Mike Miller is what makes you happy, then do it up!

Take the Rockies, for example. Following Tuesday’s acquisition of Gerardo Parra, it’s a near-certainty that the Rockies will be trading an outfielder. The most probable outfielder to be moved is Carlos Gonzalez, at least if the rumors we’ve heard over the last year-plus are any indication. And so if they want to ask for two top-100 prospects in exchange for Gonzalez, then, sure, more power to ’em! If that’s what makes them happy. They’re never going to get two top-100 prospects for Carlos Gonzalez, but there’s no harm in hoping.

There used to be a time when Gonzalez would have commanded two top-100 prospects or better. From 2010 to -13, Gonzalez was a top-25 hitter and a top-25 overall position player, according to WAR. He was a legitimate star. He hit both lefties and righties, he ran the bases well, he was a lock for 20 homers as well as for 20 steals, and the defense graded out fine in the corners. The only thing that ever kept from CarGo from elevating himself from star to superstar status was that he had trouble staying on the field. When he wasn’t hurt, though, there weren’t many better than CarGo.

Thing about injuries, though, is that they’ll take a toll on you quick. Gonzalaz fractured his right wrist way back in the minors, and in 2011, it started hurting again, sending him to the disabled list. The next year it was a hamstring. Then it was a finger sprain in his right hand, then a tumor on his left hand the following year that required surgical removal. The big one came later in 2014 — left knee surgery to repair a torn patellar tendon. Gonzalez remained mostly healthy in 2015, aside from the occasional day off due to “tired legs,” “right knee discomfort,” “sprained left hand,” or the ever-present “flu-like symptoms.” But these last couple years, after the hand surgery and the knee surgery, Gonzalez hasn’t looked like himself.
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All along, the thought’s been that the Colorado Rockies were pretty likely to trade one of their three left-handed hitting outfielders before the start of the regular season. So naturally, they kept them all and then went out and signed another.

It won’t stay like this for long. The Rockies agreed to terms with Gerardo Parra on Tuesday afternoon on a three-year deal worth $27.5 million. Chris Cotillo reports a fourth-year option is included for $12 million. The contract looks fine; our crowdsourcing project pegged Parra for a three-year deal between $24-27 million, and that’s essentially what he received. What’s interesting is that Parra joins Carlos Gonzalez, Corey Dickerson, and Charlie Blackmon in a suddenly crowded and similarly-skilled outfield:

At this stage in their respective careers, Gonzalez and Dickerson are near-clones of one another. While Gonzalez has the name recognition, Dickerson is three years younger than Gonzalez and is likely the better hitter. On the other hand, Dickerson is very limited defensively and is coming off an injury-plagued season that featured trips to the disabled list both for plantar fasciitis and a pair of broken ribs. Both struggle mightily against same-handed pitching.

At this stage in their respective careers, Blackmon and Parra are near-clones of one another. Both are roughly league-average hitters who struggle against same-handed pitching. Both can play center field and not be a total disaster, though you’d rather see them in a corner. Parra once graded out as an elite corner outfielder — someone you’d think could transition to center with ease — but there’s more than one reason to believe in the defensive decline portrayed by the metrics over the last couple seasons.

There’s just too much going on here. Something’s got to give. And it might not take long:
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At the winter meetings, I asked a small collection of managers about the evolution of the role, and all of them — save perhaps Mike Scioscia — spoke to the importance of communicating with the media and with their players.

But that story had a longer scope, and a more universal one. I also asked them about a smaller more immediate thing — I asked many of them what they had learned this year, on the job. And for those just coming to the job, what they have tried to learn before they first manage a game.

Of particular note was what former position players did to learn about pitching, and vice versa. Managers have to communicate with all sorts of different players, and yet they came from one tradition within the game. And each has spent time developing themselves in their present role.

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“When the Mets drafted me, I had a sinker and a decent curveball,” the Astros’ Collin McHugh told me earlier this year. If you wanted to be reductive, he’s still almost all fastball and curveball — those pitches make up 96% of his repertoire this year, after all — but being reductive robs all the nuance out of how McHugh has become who he is today. The Astros’ Game Five starter has learned a lot about his craft as he’s bounced his way around the league, and it will all be on display on a national stage with Houston’s season on the line.

After joining the New York system, McHugh learned that he had to ditch his slider at first. “I had a slider and curveball in college, and the two started to get too close together,” he said of arriving in Kingsport. “I did away with the slider in pro ball. My curveball is my out pitch, and I need to make sure it is where I want it to be.”

The second-biggest curveball in the game.

Only Jose Quintana and Yordano Ventura got more raw whiffs from their curveball this year than McHugh. Even if you turn it into a rate stat, McHugh does well, with a top-15 whiff rate on the pitch among starters who threw the pitch 300 times. With eight inches of cut and eight inches of drop, only Rick Porcello’s curve matches McHugh’s for movement in both directions among qualified starters. It’s big, and it’s beautiful.

Of course, a curve and a fastball are more than a buck short of 200 innings in the major leagues, so he knew he had to find something to add back in. “Once I’m good with that,” McHugh remembered thinking, “I’ll start working on something else.” So he started taking his fastball, offsetting it a bit, and “throwing it hard as I could.” The result: a cut fastball.

The cutter gave him a second weapon, a hard breaking ball that got almost as many whiffs as a slider. The pitch drops a whopping eleven inches less than his curve, and goes 14 ticks faster, effectively making batters cover in and out horizontally as well as up and down vertically when it came to his secondary pitches.

The cutter that gave McHugh the second out pitch he needed.

Especially lefties, even if the curve was already a weapon. “Anything that breaks plane as much as a slower breaking ball does, that makes hitter from that side of the plate has to respect up and down instead of just in to out, it makes it tougher on them,” McHugh said of using the curve against lefties. Big curves like his traditionally have reverse platoon splits, meaning they are more effective against opposite-handed batters than you’d expect.

The cutter is also effective against lefties, even if proving this in the numbers has been difficult due to the nebulous nature of the cutter. “Is it a breaking ball or a fastball?” agreed McHugh as he laughed.

But McHugh started with a true cut fastball as he approached the big league team in New York. “When I first started throwing it, it was specifically a cutter, it was always a cutter, that’s what I wanted it to be,” McHugh remembered. “To lefties, make it a little flat, and find that spot right at the belt.”

While the curve makes the lefty respect up and down, the cutter keeps them from getting extension and showing their power in another dimension: in and out. “It’s just something to keep guys from getting extension on you, which, as a righty to a lefty hitter, it’s always been our issue, lefty extension, whether it’s extension down here or away there. That’s where power comes from.”

Lefties show power low and in and out over the plate against righties.

Still. Armed with a cutter, a curve, and a sinker, McHugh debuted with the Mets in 2012 and… did poorly. A 7.59 ERA in just over 20 innings that also featured five home runs must have turned the team on his future, as they traded him to Colorado for Eric Young, who had been designated for assignment.

Colorado was a terrible place for a pitcher with a sinker and a curve. “When I got to Colorado, when I first trying to pitch there, I couldn’t get my ball to sink,” sighed McHugh. “That was a challenge.” A challenge that’s been well documented, but a challenge nonetheless.

But pitching there allowed something to crystallize in McHugh that he’d been thinking about when it came to his fastball. His sinker was getting crushed, whether it was at home or away, New York or Colorado. Something was wrong.

He started throwing the four-seam more, and not only because the sinker wasn’t sinking. “Make it look as fast as possible,” he said of his newer fastball philosophy. “Work it up-down. A fastball down, the perceived velocity is slower than a fastball up. A fastball moving, the perceived velocity is slower than a straight fastball. When I’m trying to throw sinkers down, my 89-91 mph looked — especially to a lefty — like 85-87 mph.”

Watching a mediocre sinker, thrown away, lefties got all kinds of a look at the pitch. They could extend on it, and it just looked crushable. So in came the four-seam, and when Houston claimed the pitcher off of waivers from Colorado, they agreed. Astros pitching coach Brent Strom “basically told me, I think you should use your four-seamer more,” laughed McHugh.

The right fastball for McHugh.

Houston wasn’t happy with just throwing it more, though. They wanted the pitcher to elevate it and work on showing more “ride” or “rise” — the riding fastball drops less than you’d expect, given gravity. More fastball spin leads to more rise, and his new team was fluent in this sort of stuff. “They talk about spin rate, in the organization, but not in the way of getting more,” said McHugh. “They talk about how it helps or affects what you do. Like, Vincent Velasquez throws a high-spin-rate fastball, how does that affect what he does?”

The task put in front of McHugh was more simple. Elevate the four-seam. The rise will come. While Curt Schilling said you want to slap the seams for rise, and Sean Doolittle talked about his hands and release points, and Phil Hughes talked about keeping a stiff wrist, McHugh felt that gaining that vertical movement on the fastball was a matter of intention:

The way I started out being able to do it was thinking about long toss. You’re playing long toss with the catcher from 60 feet the same way as if you were out playing long toss at 180 feet. You’re trying to throw the ball through them, you’re not trying to throw the ball down the mound. Get that extension. You can throw the ball 180 feet when you get down into it, as long as you get that backspin. The mound makes you want to get on top of the ball. Some people do an eye level thing. I want to do everything the same but long-toss through the umpire’s mask.

McHugh added over three inches of rise, and a better weapon against same-handed batters. “It’s an out pitch against righties,” admitted McHugh. “Especially to power righties, you want to deny extension, so you throw the four-seamer which acts like a left-handed cutter.” Against righties, McHugh’s rising four-seam gets 56% more whiffs than your average four-seamer. That whiff rate would also put him between Matt Harvey and Clayton Kershaw on the four-seam leaderboard, which is somewhat amazing considering he barely cracks 90 mph on average with it.

If the Mets taught him to focus on the curveball, Colorado told him to ditch the sinker, and Houston coached or coaxed rise out of his four-seamer, it was some combination of the three that helped him refine his cutter. “The more I’ve gotten the feel for it, the more I’ve been able to do both with it,” McHugh said. “To righties, I can make it more of a slider with some depth now.”

McHugh does this by manipulating the cutter’s release and the grip slightly. For the true, flatter cutter, he’ll “really try to get on top of the ball.” For the deeper slider, he’ll pick up the index finger a little bit, and “hook” the fingers a bit more around the seams.

McHugh moves his fingers slightly and changes focus to get more slider movement from his cutter grip.

When asked if these small alterations affected his ability to command the pitch, McHugh shrugged, even as he admitted that it’s been a little tougher to get depth on his slider to righties this year than last year. “It’s just a matter of focus,” the Astro said. “You focus on what you want the pitch to do.”

That’s a bit of a mantra for him. Focus is what helped him continue to develop in the face of bad results and an uncertain future in baseball. Focus helped him incorporate the best advice from each organization he was with. Focus on improving his pitches helped him learn more about how pitches are perceived and how he could best make use of his skillset.

And it was focus that helped him turn two pitches into four — with a rising fastball, a slider, a cutter, and a curveball, he’s much harder to face these days than he was back with the Mets in 2012. “If they can figure out what pitch you are going to throw in what count, they can figure you out,” he thought. “But if you have four pitches you can throw in any count, they aren’t going to figure you out.”

At 60-84, the Rockies are not merely way out of contention, but also mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The team’s in full on rebuild mode these days, and simply put, there aren’t all that many exciting players on their roster. However, they’ve called up a couple of interesting hitters this September who could ultimately develop into useful contributors and help out the next competitive Rockies team: infielder Cristhian Adames and catcher Tom Murphy.

Cristhian Adames

Let’s start with 24-year-old Cristhian Adames, who’s a good bit closer to being ready for the big leagues than Murphy. Adames has hit a loud .391/.440/.435 in semi-regular playing time the last couple of weeks, and has played each of the past few days while filling in for the injured Jose Reyes. Over half of Adames’s balls in play have fallen for hits, which has certainly played no small role in his recent success. But even so, pushing .400 is a great way to make a positive impression.

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For those casual baseball fans who might have found residence under a slab of basalt for the past two months, let’s get you up to speed: Carlos Gonzalez has been locked-in recently. Post All-Star break (that date chosen for simple convenience), CarGo is fourth in baseball in wRC+, tied for first in homers, and first in ISO. So, on Monday night, we shouldn’t have been too surprised when he did this:

Seeing the initial flight of the ball while watching this game, I thought this was a double in the gap that was going to short-hop the fence. The Rockies telecast said about the same thing. Instead, it was a frozen rope that didn’t come down, sailing into the first few rows of bleachers.

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There’s no questioning that the Colorado Rockies’ rotation has been awful this season. In fact, by way of FIP-, the 2015 Rockies have the third worst rotation since 1915. As of this writing, not a single Rockies pitcher with more than 10 starts has a FIP that’s even above-average this year — which leaves fans with little to look forward to. That’s about to change, though, as the Rockies have summoned 23-year-old top prospect Jon Gray from Triple-A Albuquerque to start tonight’s game against the Mariners.

The Rockies drafted Gray third overall in the 2013 amateur draft out of the University of Oklahoma, and he immediately began to perform in the minor leagues. He closed out his draft year by pitching to a 1.93 ERA and 1.88 FIP in nine starts between Rookie Ball and High-A. Gray appeared to be on the fast track to the majors after such an exciting debut, but his performance tailed off substantially in Double-A last year. After striking out 26% and 42% of batters faced in Rookie Ball and High-A, respectively, he whiffed just 22% at the Double-A level. Along with a 8% walk rate, this resulted in a middling 3.91 ERA. KATOH forecasted Gray for just 2.3 WAR through his age-28 season. Read the rest of this entry »

This breakdown starts with the Scott Kazmir deal on July 23, but there weren’t any trades from the 16th to the 23rd, so this covers the whole second half of the month, trade-wise, up until now. I count 25 total trades with prospects involved in that span that add together to have 58 prospects on the move. Check out the preseason Top 200 List for more details, but I’ve added the range that each Future Value (FV) group fell in last year’s Top 200 to give you an idea of where they will fall in this winter’s list. Also see the preseason team-specific lists to see where the lower-rated prospects may fall within their new organization.

40 FV is the lowest grade that shows up on these numbered team lists, with 35+ and 35 FV prospects mentioned in the “Others of Note” section, so I’ll give blurbs for the 40 FV or better prospects here. I’ve also linked to the post-trade prospect breakdown for the trades I was able to analyze individually, so click there for more information. Alternately, click on the player’s name to see his player page with all his prior articles listed if I didn’t write up his trade.

I opted to not numerically rank these players now, but I will once I’ve made the dozens and dozens of calls necessary this fall and winter to have that level of precision with this many players. Look for the individual team lists to start rolling out in the next month, with the 2016 Top 200 list coming in early 2016. Lastly, the players are not ranked within their tiers, so these aren’t clues for where they will fall on the Top 200.

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