One Night Only: Afternoon de la Light

My advice to you, one layabout to another: don’t ever go to work again.

My other advice: start today.

Thursday, July 22 | Colorado at Florida | 12:10pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Rockies: Jorge de la Rosa (NERD: 8)
30.2 IP, 9.39 K/9, 5.58 BB/9, .315 BABIP, 52.4% GB, 22.7% HR/FB, 4.17 xFIP

Los Marlins: Josh Johnson (10)
128.0 IP, 9.14 K/9, 1.97 BB/9, .285 BABIP, 49.0% GB, 3.6% HR/FB, 3.01 xFIP

A Mostly Irreverent Note on Jorge de la Rosa
If I’m correct, they changed their player search function ahead of this season, but traditionally it’s been impossible to search for players whose names are shorter than three letters in Yahoo’s fantasy baseball platform*. Hence, it’s been tres difficile — because of the two two-letter words — to search for de la Rosa. Another player whom this has affected: Fu-Te Ni. And also: Chin-lung Hu. (Racism, innit?) Off the top of my head, de la Rosa’s the best of the group, however.

*It returns the following: “Your search query must be at least 3 characters. (Error #163)”

A Slightly More Substantive Note on Jorge de la Rosa
He crapped the bed last time out — at Cincinnati on July 17. Line: 19 TBF, 0 K, 5 BB, 5 GB on 13 BIP (38.5%). That resulted in 3 HR and 7 R (6 ER) in just 3.1 IP.

Unlike the previous outing, in which de la Rosa conceded 7 R (5 ER) in 4.1 IP but generally did his part (6 K, 1 BB, 22 TBF), this wasn’t explained away by bad luck.

A Completely Obvious Note on Josh Johnson
While ranking Johnson No. 9 overall in his recent Trade Value series, Full-Time Employee Dave Cameron wrote of Johnson: “If you haven’t seen him pitch, you’re missing out. The fastball has both velocity and movement, the slider is a knockout, and the change-up plays up because of how hard he throws it.”

Hear Cameron now, and believe him now, too: Josh Johnson is the goods.

Batter Bullets
• Gaby Sanchez appears to be a major leaguer. His nerd line on the season: .301/.367/.462, .367 wOBA, 128 wRC+. Question: Is his .340 BABIP helping matters? Answer: Yes, and it’s more than possible that he’s just a league-average hitter, but he’s got the sort of high-contact, line drive approach — like a Michael Young, maybe — that can be pleasant to watch.
• Carlos Gonzalez’s plate “discipline” has been the subject of some interesting work around these electronic pages of late. Dave Goleblahski recently looked at said work and even coerced Resident Cyborg Dave Allen into producing this swing contour thing:

Cool, right? Anyway, if you want a hint as to what the deal is with CarGo, here’s his walk rate: 4.4%. Now here’s his strikeout rate: 24.3%. Connect the dots, America.

If I Had My Druthers
• Sources would reveal that the “rosa” of Jorge de la Rosa’s surname is actually the selfsame one as in Seal’s 1994 smash-hit single “Kiss from a Rose.”
• Either Seal or de la Rosa or someone would explain why and/or how there’s a kiss from said “rosa” — and how it got on that grave and whether it’s still there or not.
• Heidi Klum.