After being optioned to Triple-A Colorado Springs, Dexter Fowler is back in the minors trying to show the Rockies that he can still help them win baseball games. I honestly have no idea whether he helped or hurt his cause last night. Below is a breakdown of his six plate appearances in their 5-4 extra innings victory over Tacoma:

1st inning: Walk
3rd inning: Walk
5th inning: Walk
7th inning: Walk
11th inning: Walk
13th inning: Line out

By drawing walks in each of his first five plate appearances, Fowler tied the PCL record for most walks in a single game. His OBP for the evening was a stellar .833, even after he got tired of free passes and swung at the first pitch he saw in his final at-bat. Anyone who can get on base five times in a ballgame is helping their team win, right?

Err, maybe not. Here’s what else Fowler did after reaching base last night:

1st inning: Doubled off first base on a fly out to right field.
3rd inning: Thrown out trying to advance to third base on a single to left field.
5th inning: Picked off first base by pitcher.
7th inning: Out at second on a double play groundout.
11th inning: Drama Free!

Despite reaching base five times, Fowler never advanced farther than second base safely, and he made three outs on the bases through his own actions. We can’t hold him responsible for Ian Stewart’s GIDP in the seventh, of course, the first three outs are clearly on him, as is the final out when he actually swung the bat. Once you account for baserunning, Fowler didn’t do much to help his team all that much after all.

Since beginning his stint in Triple-A (which began as a rehab assignment but is now more permanent), Fowler is just 3 for 34, and the five walks last night only served to increase his OPS for Colorado Springs to .343. Not exactly demanding a spot back in the big leagues so far; in fact, I’d guess that Fowler is well on his way to being a “change of scenery” player, and he might be trade bait for the Rockies this summer.

The Rockies have activated Dexter Fowler from his recent rehab assignment and demoted him to Triple-A to work on his strikeouts. Haven’t we heard this all before? Recently we’ve seen Ian Stewart and Chris Iannetta struggle with the same issues and get the same treatment. At some point, there has to be some exploration into the culpability of the team itself. Is there a chance the Rockies have brought this on themselves somehow?

First, let’s establish if there is a pattern. At the very least, we know that the team has had three young players struggle with strikeouts in the major leagues. Fowler’s lifetime strikeout rate is 26.3%, Stewart’s is 32.3% and Iannetta’s 27.3%. All three have had trouble staying with the big league club — or at least they’ve all been sent down after showing decent performances in the major leagues. All three have achieved wRC+ numbers at least 100 or more, all three whiffed a little too much thereafter, and all three lost their jobs. Only Iannetta so far has retaken his job. 

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It was not too long ago when Jose Lopez was a perfectly capable starter on a major-league team. Sure, he was far from a star, but was league-average bat with passable defense at several positions along the infield. In early 2007, he signed a modest four-year extension with the Seattle Mariners worth around $6 million.

Lopez, 27, went on to produce 2.5 wins over the course of the deal, making it a decent endeavor for the Mariners. Meanwhile, his production dropped from average to replacement level as the deal expired last season. In his final season with the Mariners, Lopez hit .239/.270/.339 in 150 games. He continued to show little plate discipline and actually increased his O-Swing to a career-high 37%. Although he had some room for positive regression in both BABIP and HR/FB, the potential for a mediocre rebound was not enough to justify picking up the $4.5 million option the club held for the 2011 season.

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After a brutal start to the season, including an ERA over 5.00 and an 0-5 record, Ubaldo Jimenez appears to be righting the ship following Wednesday’s complete game shutout victory over the Dodgers. Jimenez looked much more like himself on Wednesday, recording seven strikeouts and only allowing four baserunners, all on singles. His fastball scraped 96 MPH in the ninth inning on his 104th and 106th pitches, an excellent sign for a pitcher who has struggled with his velocity all season long. Does this start represent a turnaround for Jimenez?

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The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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Since starting the season 11-2, the Colorado Rockies are just 13-23. They are a Major League worst 7-17 in May, and haven’t won more than two in a row since the 11-2 start. In 21 of those past 36 games, they have scored three runs or less. Last night’s loss dropped the team below .500 for the first time since they were 0-1. The team has responded with a series of personnel and lineup changes that show more than a hint of panic, even though at this stage, that is still not warranted.

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By now, surely you’ve seen the bad news for San Francisco: standout young catcher Buster Posey suffered a left leg injury (assumed to be a broken left ankle and torn ligaments) as a result of a collision with Marlins outfielder Scott Cousins in last night’s game. The injury appears to be season ending, leaving the Giants without one of the best catchers — and players — in the game.

Even though the 24-year-old Posey hadn’t completely hit his stride yet, with a meager .389 slugging percentage, he was still productive for the Giants. His .368 on-base percentage represented a marked improvement over last season’s .351 mark, and his 113 wRC+ ranked fourth among qualified catchers. Throw in his significant defensive contributions — 15 CS against 27 SB, a solid 36% rate — and Posey’s 1.8 WAR ranks only behind Rusell Martin’s 2.0.

According to ZiPS, Posey was primed to get back to last year’s numbers, a .366 wOBA and roughly 4.0 WAR over the latter four months of the season. Replacing that kind of production is nearly impossible; it becomes even harder from the catcher position, as very few players will be available and the internal options are less than impressive. Eli Whiteside will crouch behind the dish for San Francisco today, and the Giants can only hope he can improve on his career .283 wOBA. ZiPS is not confident, projecting a .281 wOBA. Such a mark would place Whiteside marginally above replacement level over 300 or so plate appearances. Thus, it seems fair to say Posey’s injury looks to cost the Giants somewhere between three and four wins without some sort of move for a replacement catcher.

The Giants currently hold a 2.5 game lead on Arizona, a team which will likely regress, and a three game lead on their real competitor, Colorado. According to Baseball Prospectus’s playoff odds, the Giants entered today with an 86.3% chance at the playoffs, including 82.8% odds of winning the NL West. Those odds, however, assume the Giants are a .564 true winning percentage team, or just over a 91-win team. Without Posey, the Giants’ would then be closer to an 86-win true talent team, or a .531 true winning percentage team.

Even with that adjustment, the Giants project as slightly better than Colorado (.525 according to BP) going forward, largely thanks to the tremendous ability of San Francisco’s pitching staff. The Giants will remain favorites by a decent margin, but instead of winning the division 8 out of 9 times, it will be more like 5 or 6. For example, the Cardinals have a .010 expected winning percentage lead on Milwaukee and a 2.5 game lead in the division, and are division winners 66% of the time.

There is still time for the Giants to pick up a worthy replacement for Posey, but given the scarcity at the catcher position, a match may be difficult to find. In the current situation, the Colorado Rockies once again have hope, despite their horrid month of May. Luckily for San Francisco, they built up a head start with Posey. It’s enough of a head start for San Francisco to retain their position as favorites, but chances are the race in the NL West will be tight down the stretch.

Through seven starts last season, Ubaldo Jimenez was the best pitcher in baseball. In 48.1 innings pitched, Jimenez allowed 28 hits while striking out 49 batters en route to a miniscule 0.93 ERA. This season, things have changed for the 27-year-old hurler. In his first seven starts this season, Jimenez hardly looks like the same pitcher. Over that same period, Jimenez carries an unsightly 6.14 ERA. Expected to be entrenched in a fight for the division crown all season, the Colorado Rockies need to figure out what’s wrong with their ace before it’s too late.
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Matt Holliday is one of the best players in baseball. Joey Votto currently has a so-slight-it-is-meaningless lead in Wins Above Replacement among National League players over Holliday despite Holliday missing time at the beginning of the season recovering from an appendectomy. Holliday (201) is second only to his teammate Lance Berkman in wRC+ (213), and plays superior defense to Berkman.

Holliday’s excellence isn’t a recent development. From 2007 to the present, Holliday has accumulated more WAR (27.6) than any other position players in baseball other than acknowledged-best-in-the-business Albert Pujols (34.3) and the similarly underrated Chase Utley (28.6). Of course, there is a distinction between true talent and observed performance, and the uncertainty involved, e.g., with defensive metrics means that we don’t know “for sure” where Holliday ranks, but you get the idea. It is easy enough to see how good Holliday has been and continues simply by looking at his player page. He’s been just about as good or better than Carl Crawford each of the last few years; Crawford has been an excellent player (and very probably still is, despite his dreadful start in Boston), yet, unless I missed it, despite the big eventual payday, Holliday’s free agency did not receive the hype that Crawford’s did. Indeed, relative to his peers-in-performance, Holliday has not received much national attention lately. Why might that be?

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Chris Ian–, I mean Ian Stewart (26) has been horrible in almost every way possible at the plate so far this season. The Colorado Rockies obviously thought so right away, and optioned him to Triple-A after only 28 plate appearances. He came back last week, and has thus far on the season has accumulated a terrifying .073/.174/.098 (.137 wOBA) line. There’s no doubt it has been ugly, and manager Jim Tracy has had it, saying that it is “time for Stewart to fish or cut bait. He’s either going to play his way in or play his way off the team.” Tracy is understandably frustrated, with the first-place Rockies losing four games in a row, including three to second-place San Francisco. However, as might be implied by Stewart be called back up after only a couple of weeks in the minors, it is not clear that the the Rockies really have any better alternative than playing Stewart at the moment.

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