Sunday Rockpile: Saito says adieu, and why the Rockies may just be the best in the West (right now)

And were a lot closer to the actual result of the Rockies than our 2007 frenzied optimism, particularly CHONE and PECOTA, so that they are looking more favorable already is an encouraging sign. I don’t know if I’m saying anything different from what you’re saying here, though. It’s not like I’m writing “suck it monkeys, the Rockies will win this year”. I guess I’m just phrasing the same thoughts in a glass half full style. I’m certainly not counting the D-backs or Giants out, still feel that the Dodgers will wind up projecting better than us come March, and definitely understand that all of us have 162 games (maybe one more) to play before anything is settled.

And then get to the end of the post and forget that I’ve left something hanging. I really need to read these before posting more often.

I was thinking after my stunning success in coming up with the last two close contests, I’d let you come up with an appropriate D-backs/Rockies wager this year.

As to your points, of course I would post a link to these projections if the Rockies came out on the bottom. Of course.., just like I prominently display our result in our bet with AZ Snakepit. What? That’s not prominently displayed? Oh… okay, so there’s one point in your favor. GoRoxGo said it was confirmation bias on my part, and here you point out that it’s also publishing bias. Good. It’s true, both of those biases should be pretty apparent by now. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s see if I can actually score something before this starts to look like the results of our early games against you guys last season.

PECOTA’s projection last season was wildly accurate, wasn’t it? What with the 90 wins for the Tigers, and the Mets beating the Phillies by seven games. I’m sorry that they didn’t project your D-backs losing that tiebreaker with the Dodgers after both of you went 87-75… Oh wait, I just noticed that didn’t actually happen, did it? Even with the million projections? Oops. Dead on precision simply isn’t going to happen, we both know that, especially this early and especially without all the pieces for at least one of our major competitors in place. Hence if you actually read between the lines of what I write, I all but say that the Rockies aren’t going to win as much as these projections say.

Still, let’s start out with last season’s record. My premise is going to be that the true talent level of the 2009 Rockies can not be judged from last season’s record at least not completely just like you argued last year about this time that the true talent level of the 2008 Rockies couldn’t be judged from 2007’s record, just like you argued that the Diamondbacks true talent level couldn’t be judged from a strict look at their RS/RA totals. There will be components of that 2008 level of performance with the Rockies, but given that there is still a good chunk of the 2007 team left, there will be components of that level of performance left as well. I wrote this in my 5 Questions preview at the Hardball Times last March:

Is there any reason to take this club as legitimate, seeing that it was only four games over .500 in the middle of September? Will a letdown in 2008 prove that the 2007 season was just a one-time fluke?

Let’s get these questions out of the way right now. Yes. There could be plenty of reasons to take the Rockies seriously in the NL over the next few seasons—and I hope to get to a couple of them in this piece. And no, a simple single season regression in 2008 shouldn’t convince anybody of their flukiness just as the spike in 2007 shouldn’t be taken as a certain sign by us Rockies fans that they’re ready to kick off a dynasty.

And both aspects are still true, 2008 did, in fact, see that regression that was coming to us and it was an Annie Savoy (by the way, you’ve got her character all wrong, mostly because you see her as a woman and Crash and Nuke as guys, look at it the other way around and it makes so much more sense). In many ways (since there wasn’t a whole lot of turnover of major parts until the Holliday trade unless you think Kaz Matsui and Josh Fogg are really that good) you could combine the two seasons to get an accurate depiction of the true talent level of the team, which was probably somewhere right around .500. If you really expect that the Rockies are just a 74 win talent level team, you’re going to be in for a rather uncomfortable shock come the season.

Let’s talk about some of the specific players. First, Willy Taveras. According to BP’s Baserunning stats, those 68 steals and other advancement opportunities netted Willy just under 12 runs of additional value. If you add 1.2 wins for that to his (-0.2) value, you get a one win above replacement level player. A lineup of eight one win starters isn’t going to get you very far. The Mets Luis Castillo was right around that level last season when his baserunning is added to his overall line, and your team was only mildly interested in trading Eric Byrnes for him. It’s not a very high bar of value to pass.

So what are Spilly’s chances of doing that, really? You’re right that his BABIP is likely unsustainable (but your example isn’t the best, I’ll get to that) with a career .334 average we could expect some regression, there’s little reason to expect a dip beyond his career average, but that’s already factored into these projections. So is a dip in his BB, from 14 to 10.2%, all of these factors are considered but you’re overlooking the most obvious and crucial, he’s still a far more valuable player than Taveras and is likely to get twice as many PA’s this season because he’s now the starter and leadoff hitter. He’s got a career .374 OBP, both these projections actually see him getting lower than that and still adding more value by replacing Taveras than we lose with Holliday. Apparently your super secret projection system that says, IDLISIMB (I Don’t Like It, So It Must be Bad) disagrees with that, but the consensus seems to see it so even with the regressions built in. You’re outvoted.

“Troy-Boy” and his BABIP. I don’t even know how to break this news to you, it’s just going to crush your spirits too much. Let’s just say that if you want this year’s wager to be on a BABIP from Tulowitzki over or under that .335 figure, I’ll happily take it.

Finally, the age issue. You pick three players out of a starting lineup of eight, let’s take a look at the other five, shall we?
Iannetta 25
Tulo 23
Atkins 29 (Stewart 23)
Smith 26
Spilborghs 29 (Fowler 22)

Should we look at the pitching staff, or do you just want to admit that the age-fairy isn’t really against the Rockies right now? There are still far more players heading the better direction on that spectrum. As is, just because a player has passed thirty, doesn’t mean that they are automatically going to decline every year, or Randy Johnson might as well have quit while he was with the Mariners, Luis Gonzalez should have hung up his cleats after his year with the Tigers. Something tells me you might not have liked that scenario. I think we both know what Helton’s capable of, we both know that there’s a major health risk there, I’m hoping it turns out one way, you’re hoping it turns out the other, but being automatically dismissive of him only works with Cleopatra in the land of denial.

Of course our rotation doesn’t yell “Title!” at anybody. You’re betting on a pair of aces and a wild card in Scherzer, we’re betting on drawing a full house given that we’ve already got a pair of kings (Jimenez and Cook) and a pair of jacks and several cards up our sleeve. We aren’t going to be shouting anything until you’ve gone all in.

The Rockies were pretty unlucky last year, with several significant injuries, as well as the team having a .250 batting average with runners in scoring position. I don’t know how they’ll do this year with RISP but since I think BA with RISP isn’t too controllable, I see some upgrade there. Also, as Rox Girl pointed out, the age argument is pretty weak. Those are just three guys and Hawpe will be 29 at the start of the season while Barmes will have turned 30 a month before the season starts – not exactly the age of washed up veterans.

Also, dude, haven’t you heard? Jason Marquis is like a total proven winner and a beast of a ballplayer. I heard one time, he punched a catcher though the chest gear and ripped out his heart… You might be saying, no that was Kano from Mortal Kombat but fun fact: Kano was modeled after Marquis.

As he certainly added more value to the Dodgers than we got back on Helton’s walk off blast. Saves are obviously overrated as a statistic, but over the last three seasons, the NL West’s leaders are:

1. Hoffman 118
2. Saito 81
3. Fuentes 80

And all three are moving on. Next on the list is Valverde at 65 and he already left Arizona before last season so you can definitely mark a changing of the guard across the division in bullpens over the last two years.

I still think overall your LF contribution will be pretty close to win neutral, though. One year of normal Manny will be about equal to the two-thirds of a season of an actually fairly decent Pierre plus the one third of a season of SuperManny you had in 2008. Last year your total LF contribution was .300/.371/.441, Manny’s CHONE projection is for .290/.399/.542 but for 135 games. If Pierre’s picking up the other 27 games at his projected .283/.328/.357 the total offensive output will be around .287/.387 /.511. That converts to a .392 wOBA or about 4.29 offensive wins above replacement. Last year, according to FanGraphs, Pierre plus Manny contributed 4.3 wins to the Dodgers.

The infield I could see going either way, but if your preferred scenario of a healthy Furcal and a DeWitt with a bat as good as last season does come true, than it should certainly be better. If my preferred scenario of an unhealthy Furcal and DeWitt regressing to some of his more pessimistic projections comes true, it won’t be an upgrade on last season at all.

The big question will be whether the step backwards you take in pitching outweighs whatever you get on offense. Lowe is a huge loss, as huge given his contribution over the whole season as Manny would have been, and the replacements you are looking at are quite a bit inferior. For the bullpen, if 2009 Broxton replaces 2008 Saito, who replaces 2008 Broxton? There’s no way around the fact that you’re losing a valuable piece there, and unlike the Rockies who have at least come close to replacing Fuentes with Huston Street, the Dodgers have not. That said, I actually am leaning to the idea that with McDonald and/or Troncoso possibly Elbert you’ll be fine relative to 2008 in the pen, it’s just that loss of Lowe that I don’t see you replacing, even with a better mix for the lineup.

until Ned swings another trade deadline deal for an ace.

Who? What ace is going to be available at the deadline? The only one that I really see as possible is Brandon Webb if the Diamondbacks tank early, and besides the fact that I don’t think they’ll be out of it by July, there’s not a snowball’s chance that they’d trade Webb within the division. Alright, maybe Halladay now that I think about it, but what makes you think Ned has the pieces left to get that sort of trade done? Your only valuable trade pieces at this point are crucial for your future success. Ricciardi would only take Kershaw as a centerpiece for that trade, are you really wanting Ned to go that far just to win such a weak division like the NL West?

I think you’re probably referring to the projections rather than Fangraphs’ win value tables, as those would include the impact Manny had on the rest of the lineup since they’re measured after the fact. As to the effects of a hitter on others around him, this has been shown to be largely a mythical phenomenon that doesn’t hold up under scientific scrutiny. That said, similarly to our ideas of “clutch”, what doesn’t show up on a wide level doesn’t necessarily rule out that such an effect could exist at a micro level, and anecdotally at least, Ramirez’s presence did seem to help Ethier in particular. I guess the short answer if your referring to the projections rather than something else is “no”, the projections don’t factor the impact Ramirez has on the rest of the lineup, but the burden would be on you to show that this impact is going to be significant beyond just a marginal bump, and just going by what happened last season, when both Ramirez and Ethier were playing well above what should be expected going forward probably won’t cut it.