The Rockies with 2 outs

Nothing is more gutwrenching than having a man in scoring position with one out and then watching your next batter pop out or something like that. You want the plate appearances to be productive, because we have a guy on base! We want that guy to score! If you aren't going to drive him in, at least ground out to the right side so the runner at 2B can at least advance to 3B, right?

But see, then we have 2 outs, and the inning is practically over. Because come on, we have 2 outs. We're gonna blow it. The Rockies are TERRIBLE at driving guys in with 2 outs.

Or are we?

Allow me to lay some learning on you.

Join me after the jump.

The Rockies are actually most successful with 1 out, posting an OPS of .806. That's pretty solid right there. They are least successful with 0 outs, posting a .758 OPS. We are mediumly successful with 2 outs, OPSing .782. It should also be noted that AVG/OBP/SLG are also ranked as such, so it's not like we slug 100 times harder with 2 outs or something, those all follow the rankings from above.

So it's not as bad as the panicky selective memory may act. There are some concerns, however.

The most disturbing number there is the huge disparity in the number of strikeouts we have with 2 outs. I thought about this for a second, and then thought "wait, but what about the pitchers? If we're getting Danny HarOWNED then there's a good chance we're going 1-2-3, which means the pitcher is gonna get pelted with that 2-out K pretty often. That's gonna skew our numbers. While we'd love our pitchers to be able to hit with 2 outs, we're not really factoring their production into our situational hitting (well, for the sake of this analysis I'm not). So looking at the numbers WITHOUT the pitchers:

Well, that seems quite a bit more realistic, but the fact that we're less likely to punch out with only 1 out seems somewhat worrisome. It's like everyone gets into their own heads with 2 outs or something (don't think about an elephant).

The upside of our batters is that we're clearly experts on not grounding into double plays with 2 outs. Good to see us running everything out hard. At the same time, however, I want to see more fundamental baseball with 2 outs! Runner on 3B, you get that ball in the air! That's been insanely frustrating.

I'm totally kidding about that last part.

So with 2 outs, here are the batters we want to see at the plate:

That's right, Whiffy McFailSuck is still our 2-out RBI leader. I really chalk that up to luck in the timing, but a .544 SLG is going to drive guys along the basepaths well one way or another. Those 9 dingers kind of make Hawpe still the 2-out guy. I mean, this doesn't really mean that much, maybe just something more to think about in lineup construction.

Obviosuly, the numbers are telling us that Dex is the best 2-out guy to have around, based on all the batting numbers. But based on the fact that Dex is typically leading off, he has the #8 and the pitcher batting in front of him, so I'm guessing that he doesn't get an awful lot of RBI opportunities. (Remember back in 2005 when Barmes had all them RBI as a leadoff hitter? That was kind of weird.)

Anyhow, because split stats are fun, we can get even clutcher and awesomer. We're going 2 outs with RUNNERS IN SCORING POSITION.

I kind of hesitated to even include Phillips in this, simply because he hasn't had an AB since like June, but whatever, he had a good stint.

Hawpe still leads the RBI leaderboard, but Torrealba's numbers are just insane. Granted, it's almost entirely singles, but a 1.134 OPS is not to be ignored.

So while the situation is never really ideal, having to produce with 2 outs, it's good to know that we have guys here who can get the job done.

Because we're gonna need them.