Wednesday Morning Rockpile: There's still a chance
by Rox Girl on Jun 11, 2008 10:35 AM MDT
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PrintWhile Monday was the pessimistic sell everything post, today will be the optimistic, let's not jump off this bandwagon just yet post. Or maybe it won't be. I don't know yet, I haven't gotten to the end.
Okay, what we have here is a team that had a losing April and a losing May, and that after eight games has a winning June. The problem that I have to get around is that it just wasn't that we lost in April in May, but we lost by a lot. We were creamed, we looked terrible, we played terrible, the team was flat out terrible. Period. There can be no argument about that.
In our glorious 2007, we had a similar April, but we actually came back with a winning May, and had winning months the rest of the year. It was a good team, in other words, similar to the 2006 Twins, for instance, that followed the same pattern. Now the positive correlation to the 2007 Rockies and 2006 Twins is that we haven't fallen that far behind the leader yet, but that doesn't get around the fact that we have been absolutely terrible over two months of the season when each of those teams had only one terrible month.
A better trailblazer to follow this time around would instead be the 2005 Astros who were similarly sinking throughout April and May. So here are my three big issues:
- 18 games under .500 on June 2nd. As far as I can tell, there's never been an MLB team come back to make the playoffs from that deep a hole. The 2005 Astros were 15 games under at their deepest. Perhaps a better source for "but it can happen" reassurance would be the 1914 Braves, who were still only 16 games under on June 8 when they started their comeback, and with a 144 game schedule, they had less space than we do. So yeah, I guess it can happen.
- No miracle drug. The 2005 Astros turnaround happened to coincide with the arrival of Roger Clemens, the Twins 2006 comeback started when they inserted Francisco Liriano into the rotation. The Rockies don't seem to have an ace in the hole like that. That said, maybe the ace in the hole doesn't need to be a pitcher. A healthy and productive Tulo would accomplish the same trick. Ryan Spilborghs getting the bulk of playing time in center might as well. Brad Hawpe returning to form... the Rockies ace in the hole might actually just be that the lineup performs as it's capable.
- Even allowing that there's no miracle ace, the rotation is still suspect. Jeff Francis and Ubaldo Jimenez have both been so-so for most of their last few starts. That might not be saying much, but they were horrible early in the season so it's actually an improvement. Greg Reynolds has been right on par with them. All three of them are putting up fifth starter type of numbers lately, and none have seemed eager to rise to mid-rotation caliber of play to back up Cook. Even with an improving offense, this is a big mental wall for me to cross, and I need to see two starters besides Cook step up with consistent sharp outings before my optimism gets fully restored. We can conceivably get there with three good starters and two that are so-so. One is simply not enough.
At any rate, the Rockies have to look like they did last night for the remainder of the season. We don't have to win every game we play in, but we've got to look like a team that's capable of winning every game at least. In April and May, we simply didn't have it.
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That Rosenthal article
mentions that the Cubs are interested in Brian Fuentes. Could the Rockies get a good deal? Any chance the Cubs and Yankees get into a bidding war over Fuentes?
What about sending Yorvit to the Tigers for starting pitching (Bonderman or Robertson)? There have been rumors of a firesale in Detroit and Pudge has been seeing less playing time.
The Rockies might not have an ace in the hole like a Clemens or Liriano, but Jason Hirsh is close to returning. And what about Rodrigo Lopez? He was solid last season before he got hurt. Any chance he could be healthy this year?
Aut Vincam Aut Periam
by PioneerSkies on Jun 11, 2008 1:07 PM MDT up reply actions
Fuentes and your other questions...
I think Brian might be our second most desirable player potentially available to only Matt Holliday, even more marketable than Garrett Atkins, as the teams looking for corner infielders or DH types are fewer than those looking for left handed relief help. A bidding war could definitely ensue, and were we to trade him (which still seems sketchy to me without better relief work from Vizcaino and company) I’d look for a return a bit above the Thatcher/Garrison/Inman for Linebrink deal between the Pads and Brewers last summer.
No way does Yorvit get us anything close to that valuable with the way he’s been hitting and his contract. I’d expect a mid-grade reliever would be the most we could hope for him.
Rodrigo wouldn’t return in time to be useful this season, his timetable was late August at the earliest, but keep him in mind for 2009. Hirsh seems to fit in that whole Francis/Jimenez/Reynolds category of just needing to show they have the value we’d need.
Hmmm..
Add Clayton Kershaw and O’Dowd might pick up the phone to chat…
You have it wrong.
O’Dowd’s on the phone asking for Kemp and Kershaw, but Colletti’s hanging up. Or not.
"Nuts!" - Gen. Anthony McAuliffe
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I'm back
Turns out following a team from South Korea is a bit of a pain… Looks like I’ve not missed a whole heck of a lot.
I’ve got to admit, I’m not in the “blow up the team” camp. I think it would just be a panic move when in my opinion, this team has had some of the most disgusting luck when it comes to injuries, poor play, and general issues. Last September was the perfect storm of awesomeness, these past two months have been the perfect storm of suck…
But that’s the biggest thing to remember in my mind. All in all, it has only been two months. Has it killed this season? Probably. I’m with Rox Girl when she says there’s not much of a chance of coming back. But would I be shocked if this team were to end up closer to .500 at the end of the season? Nah, not at all. There’s too much talent on this team as a whole to be this bad for much longer.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself. And the fire O’Dowd stuff is ridiculous. He built last year’s team, he built a farm system that got us to the point where high expectations are tough to meet. Should we maybe do a little revamping of the coaching staff (note, I said coaching staff, not manager)? It might not hurt.
Now we have two months to figure out exactly what to do with the roster. I just worry that if we panic and sell low on slumping players, we’re killing any chance for success for next season as well.
Hope this made sense… Coherence and 4 am don’t really go together too well…
You know you want to check out Matt's Korea blog: http://koreamatt.wordpress.com
Starting slow
Good digging, Rox Girl.. As you mentioned, the greatest turn-around that’s freshest in baseball minds was the 2005 Astros, who were 15-30 in late May but made the World Series (got swept). Another one I remember was the 2001 Oakland A’s, who started 2-10 and were 39-42 at midpoint (same as Rocks last year), but finished with a scorching 102-60 record. The A’s went on to lose a classic 5-game playoff series to the Yankees after they led two games to none.
Of course, if we want to talk greatest season comebacks from “games behind”, there are a number of instances where teams came from double-digits games behind to overtake the leader, and a lot later than June 11.
Games behind versus games under .500
I was just going to mention that, that it seems more informative to look at games behind the division leader rather than games under .500, since it all depends on how the rest of the division is faring. But I guess if you’re conceding the playoffs altogether (which I can understand doing), it does make more sense to look at our record on its own rather than in comparison to other teams.
In other news, after being horribly rebuffed yesterday in not being able to get the game on tv despite being in the Bay Area, today the A’s/Yankees have been relegated to a different channel and I will be able to watch the Rockies/Giants game. Yay!
Why you have to look at both games under and games behind...
is because in reality the team has to do two separate things to come back. First of all, it has to turnaround its performance from being miserable to being good. And then the team has to make up the gap between it and the leaders. It’s just as if you were talking about putting a person on a diet who was used to eating two whole pizzas a night for dinner. That person can’t be expected to just start eating healthily at the drop of a hat, and in fact would be more likely to relapse into the bad habits if they tried.
It takes a lot of braking from going the wrong direction before a team can start going the right direction, and the games under .500 is a measure of how far, how fast we’ve plunged and gives a more realistic image of how easy it would be for that team to turn around and then overcome a 10 game deficit. It’s a lot harder for a team that’s dug as deep of a whole as the Rockies to come back from ten games than it is for a team that’s around .500 looking to surge.
It's also worse and more complicated
we are also behind 4 other teams. This actually extends the amount of wins and loses needed to gain ground. If we were in 2nd 10 games out, it’s much easier.
There is actually a formula for this I saw once a couple of years ago, though I don’t know where. The number of teams you are behind becomes a multiplier effect on the number of games a team is really behind.
Personally, I’m not all for a fire sale to begin with, but one well played game last night did not swing anything since our badly played game on Sunday. And the fact of the matter is we are the worst team in the National League, so why get too excited about all of our “talent” that took us to last place. If ANY of our players on the current roster, brings back improved talent and a better team in 09…then start trading.
Or in more Yogi Berra type phrase: “we can’t be that good, if we are this bad” (not a yogi-ism, but it sounds like one)
Colorado Rockies: Continuing a long tradition of playing meaningless games in June!
In the Rockies case, this is sort of overstated...
Baseball Reference’s expanded standings has our summed games behind (21.0 for the division, 72.5 for the Wild Card) but it’s not nearly as daunting as those figures (at least the division one) or your four other teams comment make it sound.
As you say, it’s complicated. Once the team does show that it’s good and capable of a comeback run, which should be the first goal, the # of teams ahead of it does factor in, but so does their performance. So in effect, unless San Diego and San Francisco simultaneously become good contending worthy teams, they are not as much of an issue in the comeback run as their expected performance over the remaining course of the year would have them fall behind. In fact, our recent run has already made us more likely to finish the season ahead of the Padres, and we’re gaining on a projection of a finish ahead of the Giants.
So in essence we can kind of look sideways at those two clubs, but the fact that we’d have to fight both the Dodgers and D-backs remains, so it’s probably closer to being like we’re thirteen games behind rather than 10, but that’s a lot easier than the 21 number. As for the WC, you can pretty much forget about it at this point.
True...
In that, obviously, the more games under .500 a team is, obviously the more things have gone wrong and the more things need to be fixed. But you still have to look at both together, as chasing a division leader (or whoever you want to set your sights on) that’s, say, 2 games above .500 is a lot easier than chasing a division leader that’s 10 games above .500.
that's definitely true,
Unfortunately, right now, the D-backs don’t seem to be a 2 games over .500 division winner in the mold of the Padres a few years ago. Projections still seem to see them winning 88-90 games this season, even with their recent cold stretch. That means we’d need to fix our team into a 2-1 winning team just to catch them at the end. Over our last twenty, we’re six games off that pace, over our last thirty, eight games off. It’s going to be a daunting task to say the least.
Right
I was using arbitrary numbers, as I haven’t actually looked at the standings of late (I’ll wait to do that until I get a sense that we’ve been winning more than other teams in our division have been winning, and mostly that hasn’t happened yet).
88-90 games should be the bar...
If the Rockies can hit one of those win totals they will be in the playoffs. They need to be around 40 wins by the end of June or they’re out of it.
Congratulations to Ken Griffey Jr. on his 600th HR!
Cory Sullivan DFA’d?
Sullivan was removed from the Sky Sox roster this afternoon.
From the minorleaguebaseball.com transaction wire:
"Cory Sullivan was reinstated and was designated for assignment"
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