Thursday Rockpile: Beatdowns and heartbreakers and what they mean to you.
by Rox Girl on May 7, 2009 8:46 AM MDT
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PrintJack Etkin writes about how yesterday's 11-1 victory marked a return to form of a couple of the dominant wins the Rockies saw in the first week. His standard of seven runs or more is sort of cherry-picked, if he chose five or six runs, for instance, the team has had more success with those in recent weeks.
The Rockies are now 5-1 in games which are decided by five runs or more. This is still a very good sign. In 2008, the Atlanta Braves were the only NL team to have a winning record in blowouts but a losing record overall. The reason? An 11-30 record in one run games. This is a very bad sign. The Braves started out going 0-9 in one run games in the first month. Sound familiar?
From my perspective, the one-run losses say one of two things about this team. One, the Rockies are an eyelash away from being good. Two, they will never be good in 2009. Over time, good teams discover ways to win tight games; bad teams find ways to give them away.
At first I misread that and thought he had already pronounced the season over and done with, as some have. Then I reread and saw that Saunders is saying the same thing that I think, that the Rockies can be very good in 2009 or they could just miss the rest of the year. The team has to start clawing out victories in close ballgames, by hook, crook or whatever it takes if they intend to be taken seriously as a contender (if not the NL West, at least the Wild Card) in 2009.
A couple of things I do know, the right elements for a winning team are falling into place now. Over the last two weeks the Rockies rank second in the majors in ERA and third in runs scored. For the sabermetrically inclined to show that the numbers aren't a complete mirage, the team ranks third wOBA and FIP over that span. No other team can boast a top five ranking on both sides like that, so the big question is why all this strong performance has the team only going .500 (6-6) in that time frame?
From Etkin's article:
“We’ve had 11 victories and in seven of them, we’ve scored nine runs or more,” Hurdle said. “So the ability to ignite is there, but the consistency is what we’re striving to be better with throughout the lineup and throughout games. So the gaps aren’t as big where we’re scoring a lot and we aren’t scoring”
The Rockies need a winning streak, and with the way the Dodgers have been shooting out of the gun, the winning streak needs to be a pretty long one, frankly. While LA has clearly won the first month of the season, their next month is going to be a bit more brutal, with lots of road games to contenders, a tricky interleague schedule and a few games with revenge minded NL West teams as well. Dave Cameron's right in that LA is not likely to go .500 over the rest of the season, but them going .500 with road games at Chicago (both Cubs and White Sox) Philly, New York, Texas and Anaheim over these next 30 is easier to consider.
If another NL West team can make up four games on LA in that span, the race will be back on, if not, it would be very difficult to see how any of the other teams take the division this year.
Mark Kiszla writes about Todd Helton's use of a hyperbaric chamber to help control his back pain. Whatever's working, Todd, just please continue doing that.
Chris Iannetta's power surge isn't planned. Matt Daley's big league education has its ups and downs, and other notes are here.
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Losing
a large amount of your 1 run games is a great way to severely under-perform your Pythagorean Record. Sound like anyone we know? Whether bad managing, bad bullpen or bad use of the bullpen (likely some combination of the 3) it seems like it keeps happening here. The braves bullpen and pitching was decimated last year – and they didn’t have the offense to put teams away last year. The bullpen issues seem eerily similar.
"Better move your rental cars, I am about to take BP."
-Glendon Rusch
Huh...6-6 despite being third in FIP and wOBA over the span
That’s disheartening, since those rankings aren’t exactly sustainable. That should yield a 9-3 record or so. One run losses. Harumph. We’ll have to win a lot of games we shouldn’t to make up for it
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on May 7, 2009 8:53 AM MDT reply actions
We’ll have to win a lot of games we shouldn’t to make up for it
I guess that was kind of the point Etkin was trying to make – does anyone see this happening right now?
"Better move your rental cars, I am about to take BP."
-Glendon Rusch
Two things,
First and foremost, the Wild Card remains within easy reach with the Rockies only four games out. So while the most obvious available playoff spot appears very difficult at this point, another is there and winning the Wild Card won’t require the same kind of luck in the rest of the season that winning the division will.
Second, there’s another possibility to win the West besides the Rockies getting some unusual good luck going forward, and that’s the Dodgers getting some unusual bad luck, like say having your best player suspended for fifty games. While the likelihood of either happening to the point of reversing the division normally wouldn’t that great, the sum of the moderate bad luck from the Dodgers or good luck from the Rox should be enough to make up 7.5 games in the next 134. (I say that because it would put the Rockies 1 game back of the Dodgers heading into the final series at LA. If the Rockies couldn’t beat the Dodgers in LA to win the division at that point, they probably wouldn’t deserve the title anyway.
I
kind of agree with you, kind of don’t. I guess what I was trying to get across (more in my comment above) was that I don’t buy the argument that your record in 1 run (close) games is tied to luck as much as you do. A poor bullpen, and mismanagement thereof will help you blow alot of leads or fail to keep a game close in order to give your offense a chance to come back in later innings against the other team’s bullpen. Which was the larger parallel I was trying to draw with the Braves. They had lost Gonzalez, Soriano and Moylan for large portions of last season, leaving them to rely on lesser options in the pen, and it killed them in close games. I can throw Hurdle under the bus for some of his decisions with the bullpen in the last 5 weeks – but the fact is we don’t know all the information he had to play with (and nobody wants to even intimate that Bobby Cox is a bad manager). Fact is if you bullpen is not holding leads (and ties) or keeping you close late in the game – you are going to lose ALOT of close games.
"Better move your rental cars, I am about to take BP."
-Glendon Rusch
Oh I'm not saying it's completely luck
Good teams will eventually win more one run games than they lose over the course of a season, but the very nature of one run games should make them unpredictable and going 0-8 or 0-9 just doesn’t happen without some significant bad luck also being involved.
Washington’s the worst team in the majors, bar none, but even they’ve managed two one run wins, while being beat down by five or more six times. I guess what I’m saying is that for the Rockies one of these two aspects almost has to break, either they start losing more blowouts and show that they’re a bad team, or they start winning more one run games and show that they’re actually a good team in a bad stretch.
I guess I see where you are coming from now, clearly 0-8 is unsustainable even for a bad team. I hope that the luck turns around at least a little, and that the bullpen gets things figured out. Hope that Bucky can help bring a little stability at some point this year.
"Better move your rental cars, I am about to take BP."
-Glendon Rusch
wOBA
wOBA is a useful new stat, but I don’t believe it’s park-adjusted, at least not on fangraphs.
Did they change that?
Not yet as far as I know
PF did a Counting Rocks article on wOBA back in march.
Matt Murton status: Freed
Garrett Atkins status: Not Traded
Clint Hurdle status: Still Employed by the Rockies
by Andrew Martin on May 7, 2009 11:47 AM MDT up reply actions
Do you have park adjusted numbers we can go by?
My guess is that it doesn’t change the ranking that much. The team OPS +, which is park adjusted, has gone from a low of 92 a couple of weeks ago to 100 even today.
I don't...
However, I do think park adjustment is important for a Rockies site. Coors Field’s park factor has come way down from the BSBomber days but it’s still one of the most extreme in the league (3 yr avg is 107).
I’m not up on the most accurate ways to apply PF’s However, as a crude measure, though, if you take the 3-yr measures BB-ref has listed on the NL 2009 pages and appy them to today’s fangraphs team wOBA page, the Rockies’s wOBA drops to .325, 10th in the league.
Of course, that’s for the season, not over the 2 week span you were examining, but a drop from 4th to 10th after even a crude park adjustment is fairly meaningful.
Their bats have certainly been hot over the past 12 games.
This doesn't work, though
Not all twelve games were at Coors Field, two were at SD (PF 88) three were at SF(PF 103) leaving an overall park factor of +2.833, over league average production (wOBA of .332, right?) not total production. Adding 2.8% to .332 only works out to a wOBA of .341, and the Rockies have done .369 over that span, still well ahead of average.
SF
has a park factor of 103? Really??
"Besides, this is freaking 2009.... WHERE THE HELL IS MY DAMNED FLYING CAR??"
People seem to think it's a pitcher's park.
The fact of the matter is that the Giants offense has just been so awful outside of one great player they had a few years ago that it skews our perception of the place.
Ah. Yes.
Omar Vizquel?
"Besides, this is freaking 2009.... WHERE THE HELL IS MY DAMNED FLYING CAR??"
Another possible explanation
The bullpen is an obvious culprit considering how it’s performed, but what about the lack of timely hitting? When the Rockies offense is on, like it was last night, the guys seem to have no trouble hitting the ball with authority. But when the Rockies are struggling (like, say, Tuesday night), the guys can’t get a hit to save their lives.
A lot of this is on Hurdle, too. Hurdle’s late-inning shuffling shows that he’s willing to change things up if it might give the team a chance to win — though why he doesn’t give Grilli the ball in high-leverage situations is mystifying (might as well go with the hot hand.) But why does Atkins still bat in the middle of the order? Well, maybe because there aren’t really any better options, as long as CDI is batting .200 (even with his ridiculous ISO power.) Still, though, Hurdle hasn’t shuffled the lineup around nearly as much as the bullpen.
Helton's continued success
Might be the key to keeping casual fans watching. God Bless the man.
Matt Murton status: Freed
Garrett Atkins status: Not Traded
Clint Hurdle status: Still Employed by the Rockies
.360 and 4th in the NL
better OPS than Howard, Fielder, Lee, Delgado and Berkman
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
by Andrew T. Fisher on May 7, 2009 9:32 AM MDT up reply actions
Walk rate down...
One thing odd is that Helton’s walk rate is down this year. His pitches/PA are as high as ever, though, and it doesn’t look as if his swing-and-miss rate is way down or something.
SSS (small sample size) at work?
Welp, Manny upstages Helton it looks like
And when Helton gets #2000 in a few days here, the news will read OMG MANNY NOW BEING HYPERMANNY
Matt Murton status: Freed
Garrett Atkins status: Not Traded
Clint Hurdle status: Still Employed by the Rockies
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