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Yesterday, Greg Holland reportedly agreed to sign with the Colorado Rockies. As a guy coming off arm surgery, looking to re-establish himself as a premier reliever and rebuild his value, going to Denver seems to be an odd choice. As Travis Sawchik noted this morning, the recent history of pitchers escaping Colorado and finding significant paychecks are not great, and of course, because of how the park plays, Holland’s numbers are likely to be worse this year than if he had agreed to sign closer to sea level.

Generally, we’re used to players looking for big contracts next year signing in venues that fit their skills, and these type of one year deals are often called “pillow contracts”, but there’s nothing soft and comfortable about pitching in Coors Field. Maybe we need a new name for Holland’s choice? “A bed of nails contract” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so easily, but more accurately portrays the situation Holland seemingly placed himself in.

But in thinking about why Holland would go to Colorado, I think we need to acknowledge that the game has evolved, and the methodologies for evaluating player performances have changed dramatically. And given those changes, maybe Holland didn’t just take a short-term cash-grab that puts him in a worse position for next year; maybe he made a choice that could actually be beneficial to his future earnings.

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We’re beginning to count down the days to spring training as we enter the latter stages of our position-by-position look at 2016 hitter contact quality. In the last installment, we looked at NL center fielders. Today, our review of regular right fielders gets underway in the American League. As a reminder, we are using granular exit-speed and launch-angle data to determine how 2016 regulars “should have” performed.

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While perhaps not universally accepted, it is generally acknowledged that Ozzie Smith is the greatest defensive player of all time. With 13 Gold Gloves at the most important defensive position that doesn’t require extra equipment, his ability to generate outs was second to none. Back when we had few defensive stats, eight times Smith led the league in assists and still has the record among shortstops with more than 8,000 in his career.

Omar Vizquel was not quite Ozzie Smith as a fielder. He did receive 11 Gold Gloves. He also played in 200 more games at shortstop than Smith, which is the record, and he’s third all-time in assists by a shortstop — around 700 behind Ozzie. Vizquel comes up on the Hall of Fame ballot a year from now, and he’s likely to be regarded as nearly, but quite, Smith’s equal as a defender.

Being nearly as good as Ozzie Smith might be enough to get Vizquel in the Hall of Fame, given just how good Smith was, but there are considerable questions regarding Vizquel’s bat.

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Coors Field is typically not the arena upon which pitchers settle to rebuild their value. They go there because they were conscripted into service, having been drafted by the Rockies. They go there because the Rockies offered them a considerable sum for their services.

For years, Coors Field has been one of baseball’s most difficult places to pitch. It remains that way in the present.

Which brings us to Greg Holland and his curious decision to sign with the Rockies. Nicolas Stellini covered all the details of the one-year deal with a vesting option already. What I’d like to consider here is the wisdom of the deal from Holland’s perspective.

Greg Holland is either a very confident man or the Rockies’ offer to him represented the best that he’d received this offseason or, perhaps, both. There was other reported interest from the Dodgers, Cubs, Nationals, Rays, and Reds.

As a free-agent pitcher recovering either from injury or a poor season works down his preference list of those places he’d like to salvage his career, Coors Field typically comes up near the end.

And there’s evidence to support that line of thinking. Consider: of the 80 most lucrative contracts in the sport’s history, most being free-agent deals, none was awarded to a pitcher who had most recently pitched for the Rockies.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan discuss their EclipseFest sellout and answer listener emails about Jae-gyun Hwang, Daniel Murphy, and power/contact reinventions; the most informative stats; the best way to split up seasons; drastic defensive changes; career cycles for pitchers; protecting the inside of the plate, and more.

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I think we can all agree that baseball is amazing. If we weren’t all on the same page, it stands to reason we wouldn’t all be here. I think we can also all agree that baseball is stupid. Sometimes it is extremely stupid. Other times, it is more forgivably stupid. But it is very stupid. Following in the true spirit of baseball, let’s take a quiz! There are nine questions, and for each, you select one answer from five options.

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Anecdotally speaking, Clayton Kershaw makes any rotation look good. Empirically speaking, that also appears to be the case. Consider: according to the depth-chart projections at this site, the Dodgers currently possess the best rotation in major-league baseball. The San Diego Padres, meanwhile, have the worst. If one were to move Kershaw from LA to San Diego, the Dodgers would rank only 15th in the majors; the Padres would improve to sixth-best overall.

With Kershaw, the Dodgers have gotten a massive head start when it comes to outpacing the rest of MLB rotations. Despite contending with frequent injury problems over the last five season, the Dodgers have spent their way to one of the top-five rotations in baseball thanks to Clayton Kershaw plus a near-endless supply of arms. This season is unlikely to be any different.

Back in 2014, the Dodgers had a mostly healthy rotation, with Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Dan Haren, and Josh Beckett all recording at least 20 starts. The first four members of that group took the mound in 117 of the team’s games that season. Beckett added another 20, while seven other pitchers split the remaining 25 starts. That offseason, however, Beckett retired. The Dodgers paid Dan Haren to pitch for Miami, trading both him and Dee Gordon to the Marlins in a deal that ultimately netted them Howie Kendrick. To replace those two spots, the team signed Brandon McCarthy to a four-year deal and took a $10 million flyer on Brett Anderson. McCarthy and Ryu got hurt, Anderson pitched quite well, and the team ended up using 16 starters — or, essentially 13 different pitchers to fill out the final two rotation spots.

The chart below illustrates how many starters each major-league team used in 2015.

Led by Kershaw and Greinke, the 17.7 WAR produced by the Dodgers rotation represented the third-highest mark in the majors — this, despite the club having been compelled to use more starters than any other team in the league. Including the $40 million the team spent to acquire Alex Wood — including the signing bonus of Hector Olivera and the money added by Mike Morse and Bronson Arroyo — as well as the 15 cents for every dollar that went to the luxury tax, the Dodgers spent roughly $150 million to record those 17.7 wins, a pretty inefficient $8.8 million per WAR.

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One of the criticisms we get most often is that we sometimes overreact to small sample sizes. It’s true that we do, and it’s true that we probably shouldn’t, given how hard analysts have worked over the years to caution people against that very act. I can tell you this much: Our intentions are always good. And I can also tell you this: Players like Daniel Murphy are why we can’t stop.

Everyone wants to be first to see the breakout, and in the 2015 playoffs, if you’ll remember, Murphy homered seven times in 14 games. We can only identify that as a breakout in hindsight, but that streak sent everyone to the video. There was a search for a reason, a search for understanding, and that’s when the world learned of Murphy’s work with Kevin Long. The Nationals subsequently took the chance on Daniel Murphy, Quality Hitter.

Look, you’ve read about Murphy already. You know what he did. But do you really know what he did? They don’t make many players like this. There don’t exist many seasons like that. It’s really quite extraordinary.

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