When seeing Colorado Rockies shortstop prospect Trevor Story in person, very little about his all-around game strikes one as sexy beyond his current triple slash line of .283/.395/.535. However, as a teenager in the South Atlantic League, Story’s numbers are on par with the best middle infield prospects in the game which has led to many questions about his ceiling and comparisons to Nolan Arenado, the current king of the Rockies prospect mountain.
In Wednesday’s game between the Dodgers and Rockies, Colorado led 2-1 heading into the 8th inning. The Dodgers scored two in the top of the 8th, the Rockies answered with three in the bottom of the inning, and the game went to the 9th with the Rockies up 5-to-3. L.A. had runners on first and second, with two outs, and Dee Gordon at the plate. On a 2-2 pitch, Gordon hit one into the gap in right center field. Rockies right fielder Michael Cuddyer fielded the ball and threw it to cut-off man Troy Tulowitzki, who then made a weak and off-line throw home. Both runners scored and the game was tied.
After the play, I remarked on Twitter how surprised I was by the weak throw home from Tulowitzki. Yes, Tulowitzki’s made six errors so far in 2012, matching his season total from 2011. But the two-time Gold Glover has tremendous range and a very strong arm. He caught the ball cleanly and with plenty of time to get off a good throw, but didn’t. Here’s the video of the play.
Immediately, several Rockies fans and bloggers responded to me on Twitter with “whether on offense or defense, Tulo freezes up in the clutch” or words to that effect. Those comments surprised me more than Tulowitzki’s poor play. To the FanGraphs leader board and, behold, Tulowitzki has been the least clutch hitter in baseball over the last three seasons. My colleague Paul Swydan wrote about Tulowitzki’s clutch problem last August, but noted that Tulo was moving in the right direction, improving his hitting in high-leverage situations. So far this season, however, he’s heading in the wrong direction, with a -.10 clutch rating, ranking him 112th out of 184 qualified batters. Of course, clutch ratings will have big swings at this point in the season, with fewer high-leverage plate appearances per player. Just a look at Matt Kemp’s -.12 clutch rating so far tells you it’s too early to form a judgment.
But what about Tulowitzki’s defense? Does his glove freeze up in the clutch, too? We don’t have a clutch rating for defense, so firing up the leader board will do us no good.
Yesterday, it took Los Angeles Dodgers manager Clint Hurdle Don Mattingly* approximately 40 seconds — depending on where you start and stop your timer — to argue The Worst Call of the Season. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, it took the umpiring crew about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to gather in the infield, discuss Carlos Beltran’s hit, reconvene in their underground video review chamber, and then return to announce a home run.
* All white guys look the same to me.
Getting the calls wrong in baseball takes time. Managers — depending on their personality, the game situation, and the offense — take different amounts of time arguing both bad and good calls. The arguing, for the most part, exists because of uncertainty. My lip-reading skills inform me most arguments follow this general pattern:
Manager: “Did you really see X event?”
Umpire: “Most certainly did I see X event.”
Manager: “That statement you just made right there is tantamount to the excrement of bovines.”
Umpire: “You are ejected.”
Recent evidence suggests, however, that despite these conflicts resulting from close calls, instant replays still take more time than good ol’ fashioned shout-spittin’ matches.
Evidence furthermore suggests that in the time it takes to get in a healthy workout, a normal person could empty approximately ten Squeeze Cheese cans directly into his or her porcine gullet.
Which is to say: Quicker is not always better.
In Jamie Moyer’s most recent start, he went 5.0 innings against the New York Metropolitans and struck out 7, walked 2, and allowed a single donger. How a post-Tommy Johns surgery 49-year-old can strike out 7 young, healthy, honest Americans (both North and South Americans) is frankly beyond me. But it is an understatement to say Moyer has surprised me this year.
Not only has the near-half-century man earned a spot on the Rockies rotation, he is pitching like their ace.
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During the off-season, the one prospect question I never seem to have an answer for in chats is, “give me a sleeper prospect for the upcoming season.” For me, sleeper prospects are discussed throughout the season as a player’s performance is perceived as far more impressive than the prospect chatter surrounding said player.
In 2011, a few sleeper favorites included Rangers Christian Villanueva, Xander Bogaerts, Brandon Jacobs and Nathan Eovaldi who made the jump from unheralded prospects to top-100 performers in a season’s time. However, sleepers in general were few and far between during the 2011 season as so few stones go left unturned with the amount of prospect and rankings information flowing freely on the Internet.
Fernando Rodney has three saves and a win so far this season. Fernando Rodney has gotten eight outs so far this season. As strange as it may first seem for a late-inning reliever to have four decisions with so few batters faced, it’s business as usual in Tampa Bay. Here’s a box score that is fairly typical for the Rays:
It certainly appears that the Rays are micro-managing their bullpen. Perhaps the aim is to gain the platoon advantage in as many situations as possible — teams do that all the time. But which ones are doing it most often?
The feud between Ubaldo Jimenez and Troy Tulowitzki reached a tipping point this past weekend. After an off-season in which the two took shots at each other through the media, Jimenez hit Tulowitzki with a fastball during a Spring Training game and nearly caused a brawl. While no one was ejected during the game, Bud Selig — who was there — took matters into his own hands. After Selig reviewed the incident, he suspended Jimenez for five days. While Major League Baseball may be trying to curb violence in the game, it’s unclear whether this was the right decision.
Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.
2012 Organizational Rankings
#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York Mets
#19 – Los Angeles Dodgers
Colorado’s 2011 Ranking: #10
2012 Outlook: – 50 (17th)
The Rockies has a disastrous 2011 season, finishing 4th in the NL West, 21 games behind the Diamondbacks and 17 games off the wildcard pace. The Rockies led the NL West in runs scored with 735, but the Astros were the only team in the NL to give up more runs than the 2011 Rockies. The team threw in the towel on the season at the trade deadline, sending its ace pitcher, Ubaldo Jimenez, to the Cleveland Indians for a package of prospects including highly regarded pitchers Drew Pomeranz and Alex White.
About eight years ago Major League baseball saw the influx of a host of high quality third baseman. The arrival started with the debut of players like Kevin Youkilis and David Wright in 2004 and continued with Ryan Zimmerman in 2005. The string of hot corner studs slowed after this stretch and was capped by the arrival of Evan Longoria in 2008.
Baseball is a cyclical game and the development of young third baseman has stagnated over the last several years. That trend may be shifting as the minor leagues play host to several players that have impact potential. The Nationals’ Anthony Rendon and the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado are two of the top hot corner prospects in the game, and they are joined by players like Miguel Sano, Nick Castellanos and Mike Olt, among others. These players appear poised to ascend upon the Major Leagues and become the next wave of great third baseman.
Focusing on Rendon and Arenado offers an opportunity to compare two extremely talented players. Heading into the 2011 college season Rendon was considered by scouts to be the top position player in the draft class and was arguably the top player available overall. After injuring his ankle the prior year, Rendon battled shoulder issues last spring, an injury that ultimately kept him from playing the field for much of the season. Concerns over his injury history and the overwhelming emergence of pitchers like Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer, combined with his Scott Boras affiliation sent him sliding in the draft. The Nationals popped him with the sixth overall pick and signed him to a Major League deal worth north of $7 million. Read the rest of this entry »
With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.
League Trends
To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.
