Friday Rockpile: Maybe the Rockies Should Just Trade Jhoulys Chacin

For the team, the management, the rest of baseball and the player himself. Not at all happy about this. It’ll all be forgotten if he IS in good shape but UGH.

Again behind the paywall:

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7559644/mlb-sleeper-prospects-every-organization

Colorado Rockies
Rosell Herrera may not stay at short if he keeps growing, but he has plenty of arm for third base if he has to move. He’s a switch-hitter who’s better from the left side in both his swing and approach, and projects to come into power as his body fills out. He’s already showing moderate power and patience as an 18-year-old in the rookie-level Pioneer League.

but he’s learning a cutter, right?

why they keep coming up with such lame excuses for not putting a humidor in. Hiring a guy to maintain it? How hard is that? I’m sure they can come up with 50 grand in the budget for that employee. Logistics? Just stick it in some back room or something. How hard is this?

maybe as a serious answer to your actual question. And here Jhoulys was my favourite Rockie. I hope this was just a warning shot on the part of DOD.

I am for trading Chacin now. Not b/c of this workout thing. I Think that it is a sell high situation. There are some serious flaws with this kid that were exposed in the second half of 2011. I say move him, get something nice in the way of ML bat or prospect arms. Don’t wait until he fails…cause I’m pretty sure he will.

What if Moscoso, Outman, White and Pom all have a good ST and come out as viable #3 pitchers? I now have my answer; trade Chacin and put 1 in the bullpen.

About O’Ds comment, If I didn’t work hard and it didn’t effect the outcome then I wouldn’t work hard.

Sure, its a concern that Chacin appears to have been unmotivated and lazy this off season. But we need to trade him now? Maybe he just needs a little wake up call, a little re-direction to refocus him. Everyone has their slip ups, that can be okay, its when it becomes a pattern that I will start to get worried.

And I don’t mind DOD calling Chacin out here. As a tactic, I think it might be the most effective way to get the point across to Chacin. I am sure it will sting for Chacin that this got leaked, but that’s the point. Sometimes, that’s what it takes for something to hit home. Their baseball players, this kind of stuff comes with the territory. As long as DOD doesn’t abuse the approach I don’t have an issue with it.

Continuing a discussion on Sickels’ site, Fangrapgs and the Row from yesterday:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/is-it-just-easier-to-scout-pitching/

We’ll start off by just borrowing some research from Jeff Zimmerman, who looked at the relative percentage of players from Baseball America’s All-Time Top 100 list that showed up on the 2010 leaderboards. There were 13 pitchers that posted a WAR of +5.0 or higher in 2010, and all 13 appeared on BA’s list at one point or another. There were 18 pitchers who posted a WAR of between +4.0 and +5.0, and BA had identified 72% of those. They got 70% of the 20 arms who posted a WAR between +3.0 and +4.0. This is a pretty good showing for BA, as prospect evaluation isn’t easy, and they consistently nailed a large majority of the best arms in baseball.

On the hitting side of things, they didn’t fare quite as well. Again, 13 players posted a WAR of +6.0 or higher, and BA identified 77% of those. They stayed in the mid-70% range for every tier down to +3.0 to +4.0 WAR, and as Zimmerman’s final table shows, the only real difference in the results seems to be at the very top. In most tiers, they got close to the same percentage of hitters and pitchers, but when it comes to +5 WAR or higher players, they did significantly better with pitchers.

Is at 5:05 Mountain time! Hoo-rah – I won’t have to call in sick on April 5.

I may try to extend my trip a day to make it to one of the Colorado @ San Diego games.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/20734/rockies-will-win-because-of-talent-not-improved-clubhouse-culture

If the moves do work, I suspect it won’t be because of some magic clubhouse elixir. It will be because Helton stays healthy, Cuddyer has a big year, Scutaro gives the team a good second baseman, and three guys in the rotation step up and pitch 200 innings. In the end, it’s about the talent.

He just doesn’t get The Plan™

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/2/10/2789458/jeremy-guthrie-colorado-rockies-trade-analysis

FIP has Guthrie down for 4.68 over his career, a figure seven percent worse than the league average that befits his peripherals. His ERA, though, is 4.19, five percent better than average — what’s causing this significant discrepancy?

The lazy answer would be that Guthrie has been lucky, and doom is forthcoming. With over 1,000 innings to his credit — a sizable sample — luck is also an unlikely answer. Guthrie might actually have a skill at limiting the number of hits on balls in play, as his career batting average on balls in play is .273. The league average BABIP tends to be between .290 and .300, numbers Guthrie hasn’t put on his resume since he became a full-time starter in the majors. This despite pitching in front of a defense that, at its best during Guthrie’s career, has been average. At times, it’s been among the game’s worst.

What makes Guthrie a strange case is that he doesn’t fit the bill of many of the other pitchers who have beat out their FIP. Saunders, Buehrle and Lannan are all among the game’s most extreme double-play inducers, picking up a half-dozen or more per season, shaving tenths of a run off of their ERA each year. Guthrie induces more than expected, but less than extra double play per year. He doesn’t generate a ton of pop ups, à la (healthy) Chris Young. He’s no better with runners on or in scoring position than he is with the bases empty. But there’s clearly something going on here.

What Guthrie does is generate grounders that his defense, for all their limitations, has been able to field effectively. He’s not an extreme groundball pitcher, as his ground-to-fly ratios tend to be even, but the grounders he does generate have helped him. Nearly 18 percent of the batters he faced in 2011 ended their plate appearance with a ground out, a huge boost to his production considering just 14 percent of them struck out. His career batting average on balls in play for grounders is .214, whereas the league has been between .234 and .245 for his career.

Against righties, he uses his sinker to force groundballs, with 52 percent of sinkers put into play ending up on the ground. Against lefties, the change-up is his grounder weapon, coming in at 46 percent. His curve and slider both induce grounders as well, though, so even if he doesn’t come off as an extreme groundball pitcher, he has a clear plan for getting outs on the ground against batters from either side. (Data courtesy of Brooks Baseball.)

And it’s a good thing, too, as none of his pitches are missed at an above-average rate, and he throws a below-average number of strikes overall. Guthrie doesn’t have the stuff to miss bats, but he has the command and sinking pitches to force batters to harmlessly ground out. Both his four-seamer and his sinker sit around 93 miles per hour, so he has velocity, but he uses it to force weak contact, not to force them to miss.

Someone like Guthrie, who has mostly been average or better in his career for 200 innings at a time, has a lot of value to a pitching staff. He wasn’t one of the American League East’s sexiest arms, but he was one of its most dependable and successful, despite his home park and the defenses behind him. Guthrie is also a reminder that there is likely much more we don’t know about pitching than we do know, even in an age where a player’s value can be summed up with a few keystrokes and a quick glance.

Wait … I thought we knew everything about pitching …? Head explodes.

ranking how MLB teams use “sabremetrics,” broadly defined.

Not surprisingly, the Rockies are ranked low on the totem pole:

www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/what-is-sabremetrics-and-what-teams-use-it/