How to Learn From Your Mistakes

imho, the Mets aren’t getting Bay or Holliday…they really don’t have the payroll room given some of their contracts. But they also traded a lot to get Santana. I’m not huge on following other teams’ prospects, but I suspect the quality on the Mets’ farm isn’t really worth going after at the present time.

A couple of main issues I have with this:

1. The idea that Garrett Atkins would have ever netted the Rockies much is pretty silly. The Twins were offering Kevin Mulvey, the Giants, Noah Lowry. Atkins has always been overvalued by Rockies fans and the team itself relative to where the rest of the league had him, and that includes those that suggest with perfect hindsight that we should have dealt him sooner. Fine, but the quality of the return just wasn’t ever enough to justify moving him. I don’t really fault the Rockies for holding on and trying to see if they could get actual playing value for him, particularly given that Ian Stewart hasn’t been at all consistent as a major leaguer.

I’m really beginning to suspect that Brad Hawpe is in a similar category. Teams are well aware of his defensive concerns and are therefore being very conservative in offers for him. The Rockies are likely to get as much value from keeping his dynamic bat around as they are in trade, at which point loyalty and the team’s image to the players makes moving him unlikely. You can forget Davis/Broadway, and it’s not because you’ve undervalued these players or anything, it’s just because you’ve misread what teams would offer.

Conversely, I don’t think you value JDLR enough, at least not the value he brings to the Rockies if you expect Justin Duchscherer to adequately replace him in the rotation. Absolutely the Mets would jump at a Davis/Broadway return for Hawpe/JDLR and laugh to the bank at that point. Davis won’t be a tremendous positive until Helton’s contract runs out, Broadway and Duchscherer combined might be as valuable as JDLR in 2009 but you’re taking two roster spots to do the job we had done by one last season. Essentially you severely weaken the Rockies 2010-2011 teams, years the Rockies should be contending, to get a Helton replacement and another bottom of the rotation starter/middle reliever or two to add to the pile.

i do agree the Mets system as a whole is rather depleated, but this is more an idea of getting a big return on one high end talent (Ike Davis) and some decent potential pitching in return, somewhat similar to the return to the Holliday package except not quite the pitching talent in return. Its just an educated guess on the specific Mets-Rockies deal, but the main point is it will be a big mistake if the Rockies ignore the ramifications of what they can get for Hawpe and George of the Rose now as opposed to what the return can be a few years down the road. The last thing Colorado needs is another potentially high return turned down to stick with a player past their peak (i.e. Atkins sorry ass who should have been shipped to Minnesota three years ago for a Scott Baker type return)

atkins simply was slipping, his OBP dropped 40 points each year, strike outs went up, his high amount of GIDP stayed high, hits kept dropping, scored 30 less runs in 07 and 08 compared to 06. He’s always been awful defensively and has proggessivly diminshed in hitting in the clutch, proven by his studly .175-1 hr-3 rbi 07 playoff run in 11 games. To say you couldn’t expect atkins to drop off at all is simply nieve.

And for De La Rosa, i find it very hard to believe that lefty with a mid 90’s fastball that was traded 4 times by the time he was 25 and had a career 25-31 mark, 7.57 ERA in 404 innings before having a 16-9 4.38 era in 185 innings, can be viewed as not his best year and that he will have better on the way. He is an absolute crapshoot with a track record that suggests he’s not always worth the gamble.

If you’re a fan of the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately mindset then I’m sure Atkins up until this year and De La Rosa this year can be your favorites, and as Clint Hurdle proved, playing favorites can come back to bite you on the ass

We have seen the polar opposite of the Denver Post commenter who for years decried ‘Dan O’Dud’’s strategy of looking towards the future with trades.

The future is here, now. We’re a good baseball team, the kind of team that makes all that forward-looking in the lean years worthwhile. And now we have two consecutive FanPosts saying that we should CONTINUE this strategy of forward-looking to the detriment of the team’s chances for contention in 2010.

Since August of 2008, Jorge de la Rosa has been the Rockies’ second best starting pitcher. It’s easy to say “well, maybe he’s a fluke since he sure did suck before”, but some guys are late bloomers, and de la Rosa is blooming like una rosa in the last eight months of baseball that he’s played.

I really can’t fathom any sort of scenario under which this team would move de la Rosa. He’s affordable, he throws gas, he led the staff in wins, he works deep into games, he strikes guys out, he’s left handed… he is a piece that you use as a foundation for a contender right now, not a piece that you get rid of to build a contender in some sort of vague future scenario.

We’ve just hit our stride as a franchise and you want us to take off those Nike’s and try running in these awesome new snowshoes.

de la rosa’s 2009 season month by month:

March and April: 0-2, 3.57 ERA, 4 GS, 20 H in 22 IP, 12 BB, 20 K
May: 0-4 6.75 ERA, 6 GS, 32 H in 32 IP, 14 BB 37 K
June: 4-1 6.08 ERA, 5 GS, 31 H in 26.2 IP, 12 BB, 30 K
July: 5-0, 2.50 ERA, 5 GS, 25 H in 36 IP, 12 BB 35 K
August: 3-2, 4.88 ERA, 5 GS, 40 H in 31.1 IP, 12 BB 35 K
September: 4-0, 3.24 ERA, 6GS, 24 H in 31.1 IP, 21 BB 37 K

In 9 of his 33 starts he went 7+ IP, in 13 of those 33 games he failed to make it past the 6th. Doesn’t sound like he really goes the distance consistantly, and over his “past eight months of blooming” he has posted two solid months and 5 average months at best. He can strike guys out but clearly he can give them the free base almost as well as he can punch them out.

And while we’re looking through the glass, look at last year’s looking glass, was Holliday for Cargo and Street suppose to be more beneficial for the 09 Rockies or for the Rockies in 09 and beyond? Who’s to say a slugging prospect who’s getting as close to big league ready as Davis couldn’t produce some this year, it took Cargo time but once he became a mainstay he showed how good he can be, and it’s not like losing Hawpe in right and getting “stuck” with Cargo, Dex and Smitty with Spilly and possibly Davis behind them is really that bad of drop. Becasue really, how much would you put down on Hawpe hitting over .300 and leading the team in bombs and rbi’s at the break again? How much would you bet that more of the first half Hawpe shows up next year rather then the second half Hawpe? If you’re building your hopes of the 2010 Rockies succeeding because of Hawpe and De La Rosa coming out and being two of the biggest factors of the team and taking off out of the gate while maintaining that run throughout a season then you’re basically hoping for 2008 again. Wishful thinking.

I’m not arguing that he’s total trash, or that he can’t be relativly successful pitching for the Rockies, but you have 4 SP coming through the system in Rogers, Chacin, Matzek and Friedrich who are going to be competing and inevitably winning rotation spots over the next two years, along with francis coming back and the possibility of another low-end, decent reward free agent pick up out there. The window for De La Rosa isn’t wide open, he could easily lose his spot over the next couple years because of either performance or simply that the Rockies will have better, more affordable options. I’m proposing that what you can get for De La Rosa now is A) the most you’ll ever get for him and B) will make the Rockies a better team rather then create a hole in their rotation that they won’t be able to fill.

At the end of the day I don’t think DLR will be traded, and to be honest I’m not really sold that Hawpe will be gone either, I just strongly believe the organization will be better off with the return they get for the two rather then the production they will provide.

haha yeah sorry my bad i was having trouble getting it to post so i had to go the copy and paste route lol. thanks to everybody for checking out what i posted though and expressing any comments.