Moneyball and the Rockies: How the Rockies Don't Participate

Pitchers shorter than 6’!!!

I don’t really think there will be a new statistical market inefficiency the way there was with money ball (unless some new technology comes out and we can evaluate in new ways). There will continue to be trendy player types and buzz stats and such but the inefficiencies created by teams overvaluing a certain type of player will be short lived.

That being said, I think there are still a lot of inefficiencies in the baseball community that have yet to be explored. I think managing is a potential growth area. Strength and conditioning -guys like Lincecum and Bauer, and now Matzek show that there is not just one way to pitch and to stay fit, and teams like the White Sox who always lead the MLB in ‘fewest days spent on the DL’ offer some hope to whichever team can really bolster the strength and conditioning areas.

Especially the Brad Hawpe/Garrett Atkins syndrome, which seems to be that the Rockies organization is afraid to pull the trigger when a guy is at the peak of his value, and instead hold on to him with a vice grip until he’s worth nothing. It’s something that’s always bothered me – but then I started thinking about it, and we traded Ubaldo after a career season to replenish with more young talent. Could it be that we’re witnessing a turning of the page by DOD?

in fact you could argue they were very moneyballesque. If anything TB and Toronto showed last year that middle relievers were a huge market inefficiency on that allowed both teams to splurge on the biggest market innefficiency the first few rounds of the draft. Look at the Redsox a team more set up than any to make a run over the next 5 years.
Their roster is littered with high draft picks, and their minor leagues are littered with more
C Varitek 14th `94 /Salty 36th `03 both 1st rounders acquired in trade
1B AGon 1st `00 Acquired in trade for high draft pick players
2B Pedroia 62nd `04
3B Youklis 243 `01
SS Scuttaro AM FA `94/ Lowrie 52nd `05
LF Crawford 52nd `99
CF Ellesbury 23rd `05
RF Drew 5th `98/ Reddick 523rd `08
DH Papi AM FA `92

SP Lester 57th 02
SP Beckett 2nd `99
SP Lackey 68th `99
SP Bucholtz 42nd `05
SP Miller 6th `06
SP Bedard 187th `99

RP Bard 28th `06
CL Papelbon 114th `03

Looking over that team it is clear that a team should try grab as many high picks as possible as the vast majority of these players were drafted in the first 150 picks

Baseball has always seen teams come out of nowhere for relatively brief periods before fading back into mediocrity. It’s part of baseball. An organization figures something out before everyone else, then the rest of the league catches up.

Right now, I think the Rays are on to something with the way that they handle their pitchers. But the league will eventually catch up.

I hate to be the guy that yells “SCOREBOARD!”, but it seams relevant. While the A’s were a very successful team for a few years, they never made it over the hump. In fact, when i look at the list of world series winners over the last decade+ I don’t see a lot of teams on there that would classify as Moneyball teams. What I do see more often than not is top end pitching and lots of it. I also see a lot of high payrolls. Maybe the 2003 Marlins resemble more of a moneyball team, from the standpoint of developing from with in. The way I see it is that stockpiling top end pitching will do more for your chances to grab a ring then finding a bunch of cheap, high OBP guys.

It’s been keeping us afloat through multiple years of bad/unlucky drafts.

The new market efficiency around here seems to be collecting/stockpiling young arms ala Tampa Bay. I don’t know if it will work long term at altitude, but it’s worth a shot.

but I think the Rockies’ secret to success is to somehow exploit the natural distinction they alone possess: playing at altitude. Thus far, it’s been viewed as a disadvantage, an obstacle to overcome, and thought has been put into how to negate it (groundball pitching, humidor) but is there any advantage in baseball to playing half your games at 5200 ft and the other half at 0-1000 ft? I think there has to be some somewhere and when the Rockies spot it, they can exploit it.

In other sports, Denver teams have used the strategy of conditioning at altitude themselves, and then basically running around a lot and forcing the other team to keep pace, hoping that the other team gets tired first. Baseball is less of an endurance sport within the context of a single game so it’s hard to see how this applies at first, but is there some other way or some related way (the best I come up with is the Helton strategy of getting the other pitcher to throw a bunch of pitches)? If so, having your AAA team at 6000ft is suddenly a boon, and there’s an advantage that no one else in the league can readily copy.

I don’t think there’s enough of an advantage to be found to make a huge difference, but there could be an edge to be gained. This combined with smart scouting, fixing the player development system to get guys’ heads in the game, spending money wisely, a new TV deal in a few years, and 3-millionish attendance could make the Rockies very competitive for a mid-market team.

    The rockies seem to be poor at player developement and continueing developement. Granted it’s hard to do developement with the maniacle focus you can in latin america elsewhere. It used to be done here with with more minor league teams. There used to be more industrial league teams to scout. There were more independent leagues. There were more ways to stoke passion for the game by greater particeipation by all ages.

    Branch Ricky created power house teams by maniacaly focusing on player developement and not just being a sort of SABER pioneer. He invented the so called farm system. He went outside the box to get the Cards and then the Dodgers to invest in lesser leagues to be entry level instruction on his model and to expand his scouting base. He made small amounts of money go a long way by inveting in an espirit beyond normal by letting people say they were affiliated with the St Louis Cardinals or Brooklyn Dodgers. He got exclusive information that way. He turned unofficial but qualified eyes and ears to find names and places to investigate. It made his official scouts more efficient by giving them more and better to work with.

    A while back I suggested that the Rockies invest in locking up Universities around the country into exclusive information exchanges on that model and investing on player development at those schools on our model what ever we want that model to be. Universities have been doing this with buisnesses in other industies for years and years. Wharton and Harvard buisness schools have always put out good products that could work anywhere but were tailored to work for certain Wall Street firms over the years. Certain schools proudly proclaimed their partnerships with individual oil companies back in the heyday of big oil. Mines does this to this very day.. Pitt used to be the Gulf Oil school. Texas A& M was was Tennaco for example..
    
    What if the Rockies were to develope relationships with some of the best baseball schools in the country and lock up the info of their scouting departments and pay them to develope players our way?. It doesn’t mean those players would be exclusively ours; but they were developed to suit us. That pool of players would be tailored to us and our way. Why not pay a school to develope Marshall pitchers as an experiment. Why not turn other departments to research medical information for us exclusively? Or engineer a better spec bat that meets MLB standards but exceeds their performance? Give me other ideas on this and don’t just try to shoot it down.

With defensive metrics more accurate than they’ve ever been (albeit still evolving), it would be great if the Rockies could employ whoever created total zone or UZR. What the Rox are really missing is a good run-prevention scheme. I think therein lies the true advantage that playing at altitude can uncover – being able to defend in areas that others can’t.

Sure, the Rox have attempted to stockpile fast/toolsy outfielders to be able to cover the expansive ground of Coors Field, but that same effort needs to be put into infielders and such as well. And, obviously not just “well, this guy only made x amount of errors last season.” They need to really focus on defensive metrics and, combined with scouting, determine what really makes a great fielder. That might be the next form of Moneyball.